


Laurel Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

by The_One_True_Nobody



Series: Laurel Potter: The Girl Who Lived [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Mystery, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-13 06:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21489808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_One_True_Nobody/pseuds/The_One_True_Nobody
Summary: The Girl Who Lived appeared cheerful and intelligent, a model student. So charming she was that even being sorted into Slytherin House didn't do much to hurt her popularity at Hogwarts. Not many people understood that there was something fundamentally wrong with how she looked at the world. But she seemed able to befriend anyone. It was no wonder no one saw how alone she was...
Series: Laurel Potter: The Girl Who Lived [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548946
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue: The Girl in the Tree and the Old Man She Met There

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Harry Potter series of novels and all associated fictional characters or locations are the intellectual property of J. K. Rowling, and whoever else has legal ownership of whatever and whichever. The only things that I claim ownership of are this work of fan fiction itself, and any original characters I might create for it. I do not intend to derive any monetary profit through the writing and publication of this fan work, and strongly recommend that anyone reading this support the official novels, if for some bizarre reason they haven't already!
> 
> Revision Note: At any point in time, with or without out notice, small mistakes, typos, and other minor changes may be made to any chapter of this story as I become aware of them. I will only post additional notes such as this one when an important update or rewrite is posted.
> 
> Cross-Post Note: This work was originally posted on FanFiction.Net on November 13th, 2019. I am the original author and beginning with Chapter Two, I will be posting all future chapters on Archive of Our Own shortly after they go live on the original site. There will be slight formatting changes between versions, as Archive of Our Own allows for formatting options that FanFiction.Net does not.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A simple, hair-brained scheme to make the lives of Vernon and Petunia Dursley slightly more annoying has unintended consequences, giving seven-year-old Laurel Potter the help and the tools she needs to gain the upper hand over her horrible aunt and uncle.

**Laurel Potter and the Philosopher's Stone**  
\- a _Harry Potter_ alternate timeline fan novel -  
by  
The One True Nobody

**~**

"I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay."

— Madonna

**~**

"The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others."

— Pierre Charron

* * *

**\- Prologue -  
"The Girl in the Tree and the Old Man She Met There"**

* * *

**L**aurel Potter, the ten-year-old girl who lived with her aunt and uncle at Number Four, Privet Drive, had grown up wanting for nothing. That, at least, was the impression her teacher had. She always arrived at school, resplendent in well-cleaned clothes that betrayed nary a wrinkle, black hair clean and shining in its tight ponytail. Her green eyes shone with good cheer and mirth, and not a small amount of intelligence: she was the most popular girl in class, and she was a very diligent student. Her cousin, a fat and ill-tempered boy named Dudley Dursley, was constantly being compared to her by their teachers... which infuriated his parents, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, to no end. But they would not dare say anything against it these days. Laurel knew they wouldn't and she knew why. She knew they wouldn't and knowing that they wouldn't just _never_ got boring. She took great private joy in basking in their tight-lipped irritation every time she brought home a report card to show off her marks.

It had not always been that way. There had been a time, when Laurel was small, when she had been forced to wear her cousin's hand-me-down pajamas and shirts and pants. She had slept in the cupboard under the stairs, and her only real family had been the spiders. She had loved the spiders, and she hoped they had thrived since she had left them. But she had come to understand that her aunt and uncle were horrible to her, and something deep inside her heart had refused to let it stand.

She had hatched a scheme a few weeks after the start of school, the year she had turned seven. She had gone out, in the dark of night, and she had climbed a certain tree, one that she had found at the local park. It was, from the outside, an ordinary tree, but as she had played at the park some weeks before, she had climbed it and discovered that some freak miracle of growth had created a comfortable nook very near the top, one that she could sit in safely and even curl up in if she needed to hide. Thinking it might be a good place to hide if the other children wanted to make fun of her again, she'd remembered it.

So, that night, she'd quietly snuck out of the house, locked the front door before closing it, and crept from shadow to shadow up the road until she'd come to the park. And then in that tree she had hidden herself, knowing that if she did not come back, did not go to school in the morning, eventually the police would have to be called. And in calling them, the Dursleys would have to hide their treatment of her. Perhaps they would claim that Dudley's second bedroom was hers, but Laurel had a plan for that. She would cry, she would sob fake sobs and tell the police officer who found her about the cupboard, and how the spiders scared her. She would behave as if the cupboard itself were normal, and that the spiders were the problem. Surely, she knew, no policeman would see the cupboard as normal. She had asked some classmates who were nicer than others what their rooms at home were like, and all of them had their own rooms like Dudley's. So surely it would cause the Dursleys some grief if the policeman who found her didn't like the cupboard. That, combined with the oversized and faded boys' clothes she was wearing, would surely look bad to an officer of the law!

That this would get them in trouble with the _law _never entered her head in spite of what she was using to spoil her family's name, because no one had told her about child services or anything like that. She simply knew that the Dursleys hated to appear anything other than normal and respectable, and that the best revenge she could think of would be to start bad rumors about them. It would make them very angry, and they would punish her, but punishing her would not make the bad rumors go away.

The police never found her, however. As she hid in the tree after the sun had risen, reading a book that she had nicked from the mostly-untouched bookshelf in Dudley's second bedroom (_The Hound of the Baskervilles _by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) she heard someone approaching the tree from below. She paused, remaining still and quiet, and bit her inner lip in worry as she heard someone deftly begin to climb the tree. She would have to talk to whoever it was and convince them not to mention that they had seen her, but if she told them she was playing hide-and-go-seek, that would probably be enough to make them go away and keep her a secret.

She dog-eared the page she was on, stared at the dog-ear in dry amusement as she realized the irony of it, and closed it. A few moments later, a branch was pushed aside and Laurel looked up, staring into the stranger's face. A very strange face it was, too. Blue eyes gazing out at her over half-moon spectacles, perched upon a long nose that was quite crooked, as if it had been broken more than once. Beneath the nose and spectacles hung a long, silver-white beard that continued on down and out of sight. It gave her the impression of a wizard out of one of those Tolkien books that the Dursleys had forbidden her to take out of the school library the one time she had come home with one.

Not that his state of dress was very wizardly, but it was odd all the same. The man wore a suit and tie. Very strange tree-climbing attire indeed.

"H-Hello," Laurel said. The old man smiled kindly.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked. Mutely, Laurel nodded.

He looked old enough that he shouldn't have been climbing a ladder, let alone a tree, but he hoisted himself up into the hollow and, as Laurel sat up and shifted, managed to find a comfortable place to sit next to her. His legs in their neat dress-pants dangled freely. She stared; he was wearing pointed boots with buckles instead of laces. Definitely not the sort of shoes you climb trees in, either!

"A very comfortable place to get away from things," the old man observed softly, folding his hands atop his knees and gently kicking his legs out in front of him as if he himself were a child relaxing in a treetop hideaway. "But is today not a school day, Miss Potter?"

Laurel stiffened. The old man knew her name? Well, that itself wasn't terribly odd. There were a lot of strange people who seemed to know her, strange people who would wave or bow or in one memorable case, shake her hand, when she was out shopping with her relatives and the like. Aunt Petunia had been thoroughly spooked by that last one, and Laurel had wondered if she knew the man herself. But she had known better than to ask about it. _Don't ask questions_... it was a very important rule for a peaceful life with the Dursleys, so if Laurel wanted to know something, she had to find out on her own. None of the strangers had ever stuck around long enough for her to talk to them before.

So Laurel gulped and said, "Yes, but I'm not going."

The old man hummed to himself. "You'll be in trouble with your aunt and uncle when your teachers call home," he said. "To say nothing of the worry you'll cause them if you go wandering off without permission. Is it truly worth it, just to skive off on school?"

Laurel, thinking quickly, realized that telling this man could be as good as telling a policeman as far as starting a bad rumor went. She ducked her head and said, "I'm not skiving! I called out sick," Laurel said. "I'm just relaxing outside instead of inside. The spiders make it hard to sleep."

The old man blinked and some of his good cheer vanished, to be replaced by a kind of uncomprehending blankness. Then he turned to look at her over his half-moon spectacles for a few moments, as if he didn't believe her. But something flickered in his eyes, and he asked quietly, "Have spiders gotten into your bedroom? I'm sure if you told your aunt, she would clean them out so that you can rest."

Although she had claimed to be sick and the old man wasn't questioning it, Laurel got the impression that he hadn't believed her lie. But for some reason, he didn't disbelieve her about the spiders. She gulped and looked away.

"W-well, there are a lot of spiders in my cupboard..." she admitted, trying to go along with her original plan. But something about the old man made her feel as if she was sitting under an X-ray. She shivered. Suddenly, Laurel wanted nothing more than to get out of this tree and find a new place to hide.

The old man turned away, and said no more. For some time after that, the two sat quietly. Eventually Laurel's unease subsided somewhat, although she wondered why he wasn't asking about her cupboard. Was she wrong? Was sleeping in a cupboard normal after all? Guilt crept into her heart. If it was normal, then Laurel had made her aunt and uncle worry for nothing... she should climb down, and find a bus that could take her to school... oh, but she didn't have any money...

"Is it a good book?" the old man asked. Laurel gave a start and glanced at him. He was smiling now, eyes twinkling behind his spectacles. "I confess, I'm woefully behind on my reading. _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ is a rather famous one, however, is it not?"

Laurel's eyes went wide.

"'Rather famous' is a way to say it," she said, disbelieving. "Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes! Even me."

"Ah, yes... the famous detective," the old man mused. "I have never read any of the stories, but you cannot swing a shopping bag in a London department store without knocking a stuffed bear wearing a deer-stalker cap off a shelf, can you? I'm surprised a girl your age would be reading such a book."

Laurel shrugged.

"Dudley's got all these books in his second bedroom," she said. "But he never reads them. It's a waste, isn't it? They just get all dusty. So I sneak one out every now and then. But my cupboard doesn't have a light, so I have to go out to the park or something to read."

The man's eyes lost the cheerful twinkling look they'd had up until this point. He didn't respond right away. He almost seemed to be trying to decide something. Then, after a moment, he nodded.

"A book that goes un-read certainly is a waste," the old man said. "But it would not do to steal from your cousin, either."

"I put them back when I'm done! He never even notices they're gone," Laurel said, bristling.

The old man smiled. "Oh, I do not think you're doing anything wrong," he said. "But if he does notice, I am certain he would tell your aunt or uncle, and that wouldn't be good. I think..." The old man paused. "...Yes, I think it is better that you have your own copy. I will see what I can do."

The old man tilted his head downward then, the smile fading away into something... older, more tired-looking.

"...I am afraid I must insist that you return your aunt and uncle's house," the old man said.

Laurel frowned, opened her mouth to try and protest that she would rather stay in the tree, because she needed to rest and get better and the spiders weren't helping. But the old man held up a hand. She couldn't help biting back her response, and he was smiling in apology now.

"I must insist that you return to your aunt and uncle's house _later_," he amended. "It is... let me see..."

The old man slipped his hand into his front jacket pocket, withdrawing from it a fancy watch. He looked at it. Laurel leaned in, momentarily distracted. She couldn't see the face or hands from here, but it looked like quite a nice pocket watch. He nodded to himself.

"It is quarter-past ten," the old man advised. "Remain here, or find a more comfortable place to read if you wish, and then return to number four around lunch time. I think, by the time you return, your spider problem will be taken care of."

Laurel frowned deeply and glared her best Aunt Petunia glare at the old man, which seemed to amuse him, because the twinkle returned to his eyes.

"How can you know that?" she asked crossly.

"I have my ways," the old man said mysteriously. "For now, I will leave you alone with that fascinating book. Perhaps I shall buy a copy for myself. It's long past time I became acquainted with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I think."

As the old man shifted and moved to plant his pointy-toed left boot on a lower branch, Laurel folded her arms obstinately over her chest, hugging the book to it, which slightly ruined the effect of crossness she wanted. But she said, "And now you're just going to leave? That's rude. I don't even know your name."

The old man paused, looking still more amused. "You're quite right, I have been rude!" he laughed, as if only just realizing it himself. "My name is Albus Dumbledore. Enjoy your day off from school, Miss Potter, and get well soon."

And without further conversation, the man called Dumbledore climbed down and out of sight. Frowning, Laurel stared at the place his head had withdrawn from sight. She sighed, settled back down, and opened her book to the page she had marked, thinking of the odd encounter with the old man, and mentally kicking herself for not asking him if he knew about the other strangers who seemed to recognize her.

She wondered if maybe she ought to ignore his advice to go back home, but she knew it probably wouldn't do her any good. She thought he might know Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon and they'd asked him to look for her, so she climbed down the tree when she started to feel hungry and made her way back to Privet Drive. When she got there, she found her aunt sitting stiffly on the doorstep, eyes darting up and down the street. The woman stood up quickly when she saw her a few houses down, and bustled over.

"You—!" she began, lips thin with anger, but she stopped. Her jaw was tight and Laurel cringed, knowing that she was about to be sent to her cupboard, which maybe wasn't anything other than normal at all.

But Aunt Petunia glanced around, seeming fearful, and turned back toward the house, putting her hand on Laurel's back to push her toward it.

"Inside! Get inside!" Aunt Petunia whispered, stiffly. "Go upstairs. To... Dudley's second bedroom. Take your things up there. And change your clothes! There's a bag of new things on the... on the kitchen table. Get changed and then come down for lunch."

Laurel looked up in alarm. "Dudley's second bedroom?" she asked faintly. "But... what about my cupboard?"

Aunt Petunia flinched, and cast a nervous look around, as if she expected the neighbors to be peeking out of their windows and listening to every word they said.

"You won't be sleeping there anymore," Aunt Petunia said tersely. "And don't ask questions."

They reached the front step of number four, and as Aunt Petunia opened the door to push Laurel inside, Laurel's eyes fell on a faint, dirty half-footprint on the floor that Aunt Petunia normally kept sparkling clean. It was the front of a boot-print, with a pointed-toe shape...

After that, Laurel Potter said good-bye to her friends the spiders and moved her few possessions up into Dudley's second bedroom. She changed clothes, into a cute skirt and shirt that her Aunt had apparently rushed out to buy her, and gave back the horrible over-sized shirt and pants. The lunch that Petunia made for her was cold-cut sandwiches, but compared to what she normally had, it was a lot. And then Laurel went back upstairs, opened the door, and stopped in the doorway.

There was a large, brand-new hardcover novel on her bed. She walked over to it, and lifted it, her fingers brushing over the embossed cover. An image of a tobacco pipe adorned the front, beneath the words _The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection_. Turning it over, she read off the back that it contained not only _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ but also all of the other Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories that had ever been written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

She sat down, staring at it. It certainly had not been there before. Abruptly, she stood again and whirled toward the window, heart pounding, for her brain had finally registered something her eyes had tried to tell her when she'd first stepped into the room: the window was open, and in the distance, she could see a bird flying away over the rooftops several blocks away. She walked over to it and looked out, wondering how it had gotten open. But there was no one outside, so she closed and locked it.

_Did Albus Dumbledore sneak the book in through my window?_ Laurel thought wildly. A mad thought. No one would climb the front of someone's house in broad daylight like that. Besides, her window locked from the inside...

She thought back to the footprint near the front door, the pointed-toe footprint. Maybe, though, the reason Aunt Petunia had suddenly decided to buy her new clothes, feed her more food, and move her into a real bedroom had been that old man she had met in the tree...

Bemused, Laurel Potter picked up the old copy of _The Hound of the Baskervilles _that she had been reading at the park and returned it to Dudley's neglected bookshelf. Her eyes drifted over all of Dudley's old, broken things. There would be a big project of moving these things out of her room, Laurel knew... _her_ room, yes, that sounded so nice even in her head. She would probably be the one who had to do all of the work, she thought. Better rest up while she had the chance.

So, Laurel Potter flopped back onto her bed, opened her shiny, new Sherlock Holmes collection, and running an absentedminded fingertip across the lightning-shaped scar above her left eye, she began to read. She found where she had left off in _The Hound of the Baskervilles _and lost herself in the mystery, not knowing just how much the status quo had changed, not knowing that over dinner, her Uncle would with a sublimely pained expression on his large mustached face tell her that she and Dudley would be moving his extra toys and things into the attic, not knowing that Aunt Petunia would ask her after dinner if she perhaps wanted to go shopping for more clothes over the weekend, not knowing that in two months, her Aunt, looking stiff and strained, would come up into her bedroom while Uncle Vernon was away at a business dinner, to tell her the truth about the "car crash" that had killed her parents...

The ten-year-old girl who lived with her aunt and uncle at Number Four, Privet Drive, had grown up wanting for nothing. That, at least, was the impression her teacher had. She always arrived at school, resplendent in well-cleaned clothes that betrayed nary a wrinkle, black hair clean and shining in its tight ponytail. But she had grown up wanting for everything, until an old man named Albus Dumbledore had visited number four and, because he was a wizard, made sure that Vernon and Petunia Dursley knew in no uncertain terms that he would not tolerate their mistreatment of their niece any longer. For Laurel Potter was a witch, and her daring plan to start bad rumors about the Dursleys by sneaking away and hiding until a policeman found her had been a smashing success. It hadn't gone anywhere close to how she'd expected it to, of course...

...but life was good. And now, at ten years old and as the school year came to an end, Laurel Potter lay awake every night, her window thrown wide open, gazing out into the stars and wondering when the owl would come.

The owl that was surely going to be sent soon, sent with the letter that told her she had been accepted as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, like her mother before her...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> I have a grudge against Harry Potter fanon worthy of Severus Snape, and if I went into detail about it here, I suspect I would anger some people who believe that it enriches Harry Potter fanfiction in general. I do, believe it or not, understand the sentiment. But I feel much of it, through repetition, weakens the potential of many stories and presents a crutch upon which many less-talented fanfiction writers lean. At its worst, it's used as an excuse for some truly horrible fanfiction trope repetition. Manipulative Dumbledore, who wants Harry to die as a sacrificial lamb to defeat Voldemort and has been hiding Harry's birthright as Heir to the Noble and Ancient House of Potter and the vast piles of gold that come with it! Oh, and Slytherin House has a policy against displays of disunity between students! And pureblood noble etiquette, and wards, and magical cores and on and on and on. I'm sure there's some story, if you follow the memetic "bloodline" of the tropes back far enough, that does something worthwhile and engaging with each of these concepts, but I have only ever seen them, at their best, as elements that cheapen even the actually good stories they appear in.
> 
> So, I will not be using them. At all. And if a character appears in this story who has a generally accepted fanon portrayal, you can expect them to not be anything like that in this one. I'll draw on canonical information as my primary source and my own theorycrafting and imagination to fill in whatever blanks canon leaves if it turns out that I must fill them in for a particular story situation to work. If you are so attached to fanon that this is an immediate turn-off (or if you feel defensive in the face of my criticism of it), then perhaps this is simply not the story for you.
> 
> As for this prologue... well, I decided while thinking of how to start this story that I don't want to bog the early chapters down with the familiar slow burn of the original Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I love the first half of Book One, but since fanfiction is written for people who (presumably) have already read it, I figured it'd be more worthwhile to get into the Hogwarts school year and the main plot of the book quicker and focus more strongly on that than on spending multiple chapters treading the mostly-familiar ground of our female-Harry's oppressive existence under her vile relatives. So I decided this would be a story about a version of Potter who had learned she was a witch long before receiving her letter. I decided that Albus Dumbledore would most certainly put his foot down if he realized that the treatment our heroine was receiving was having an effect that defeated the purpose of leaving her with the Dursleys to begin with, causing her to run away and endanger herself. I also wanted to show Laurel's more Slytherin-aligned personality in a way that doesn't necessarily make her smarter than she should be at the age of eleven by having her hatch a kind of ill-advised scheme that only "worked" in a way she couldn't possibly have predicted and probably wouldn't have gone half as well otherwise.
> 
> That is all. For those of you who stick around... I hope that you enjoy the story!
> 
> — Lewis Medeiros,  
November 13th, 2019 at 2:00 PM


	2. Chapter One: Minerva McGonagall At Wisteria Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About a week before her eleventh birthday, it finally arrives: a letter inviting Laurel to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. With the Dursleys unable to act overtly to keep Laurel away from the magical world, and Laurel herself knowing just what buttons to push to make sure they behave, she embarks on a trouble-free shopping trip to Diagon Alley accompanied by Professor Minerva McGonagall, a full five days before Rubeus Hagrid would have taken Harry on the same trip in another life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The Harry Potter series of novels and all associated fictional characters or locations are the intellectual property of J. K. Rowling, and whoever else has legal ownership of whatever and whichever. The only things that I claim ownership of are this work of fan fiction itself, and any original characters I might create for it. I do not intend to derive any monetary profit through the writing and publication of this fan work, and strongly recommend that anyone reading this support the official novels, if for some bizarre reason they haven't already!

**\- Chapter One -  
"Minerva McGonagall At Wisteria Walk"**

* * *

**O**n July the twenty-third, the letter had come at last. She'd spent many nights sitting up in bed hoping it would fly in through the window, but it actually came in through the mail slot, the last place Laurel would have thought to look. And it was hand-delivered by a very tight-faced Uncle Vernon, who looked like he might have been on the verge of one of his angry rants.

Whatever Mr. Dumbledore had done or said on the day he'd paid his visit to number four must have been very convincing indeed, Laurel thought as she bounded up the stairs with the parchment-envelope in hand, grinning from ear to ear. Uncle Vernon was unpleasant on the best of days, always going on loud, self-assured rants about how this, that, or the other thing was a sign of society going to the dogs. He was perfectly pleasant around people he wanted something from or people who were in positions of authority or power over him... but when he had the authority, he wasn't shy about giving your eardrums a beating.

Thankfully, only the ear-drums. It hadn't been until age nine-and-a-half when, curious about the sudden absence of a girl at school a grade below, Laurel had done some poking around with other students, and heard a whisper that the girl and her mother had gone to live with family in Scotland and the father had been arrested. Apparently the man had confessed to beating his daughter and wife after the girl had run away from home and been found by a kindly stranger. A very odd stranger, too, according to Laurel's source (who had heard her parents talking about it in the kitchen when she'd run back home for her pencil bag a few days earlier). The rumor said that the man wore a purple silk top hat, which had definitely caught Laurel's attention. A man wearing such a hat had bowed to her in a shop, once.

_Well, it isn't as if only one person in the world is allowed to wear purple silk hats,_ Laurel had mused at the time. _But if she was found by a wizard, that might explain why her father suddenly felt the need to turn himself in and confess his sins._

The bottom line, though? Laurel was very glad that her aunt and uncle had stopped at forcing her to sleep in a cramped broom closet, making her do chores, giving her Dudley's overbig hand-me-downs for clothes, and yelling at her a bunch. Knowing what she knew now, she supposed they must have been afraid of beating her. She didn't blame them. If they had tried, she might have accidentally removed Uncle Vernon's chin and attached it to the seat of his trousers. Doing magic by accident if she got scared was one of the things that Aunt Petunia had (grudgingly) warned Laurel about when she'd explained about witches and wizards and Hogwarts.

Laurel leaned against her closed bedroom door, remembering all of this as she stared at the thick envelope. It felt like her heart was a balloon being pumped full of helium. Or perhaps laughing-gas. She did feel a happy giggling fit coming on. Almost four years ago, Laurel had climbed a tree in the park and hidden herself away, and her attempt to make her relatives' lives a little more annoying out of spite had turned... into this. She had attracted the attention of some wizard who had taken her side, just as the girl at school had found the man in the purple hat. The thought of secret wizards and witches who might use their sneaky magic to enchant or intimidate bad people into confessing to the police or changing their ways...

...was silly, of course. But some of them apparently did. And Laurel was grateful for it. Ever since learning about witches and wizards, Laurel had taken to people-watching on occasion, wondering how many of the oddly-dressed people she noticed from time to time were magical. It seemed like wizards hard an odd sense for clothes, like with the purple silk hat and Mr. Dumbledore's pointed, buckled boots.

Laurel ran her fingers over the purple wax seal on the backside of the thick, yellowish envelope. Pressed into the wax was a coat of arms, a letter _H_ surrounded by a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake. Her fingertips slid slowly along the indentations of each; she wondered what the coat of arms meant, what the animals represented, and how long Hogwarts must have existed to be sending out letters in parchment envelops with something as unabashedly medieval as a wax seal coat-of-arms holding it closed. She also wondered why they were still doing it. A tradition for making their acceptance letters fancy and memorable, she thought? It almost seemed a shame to break the seal, so she considered it for a moment, then slowly began to rip at the parchment around the top of the seal.

Laurel wanted to keep the letter and the envelope, she'd decided. It would make a lovely souvenir.

Once she had the parchment neatly torn in semicircle around the seal, she turned the envelope over, re-reading the address that had been written in emerald-green ink. The seal had made her wonder something, and she stared at the address for several moments, trying to see what the lines looked like. It read:

_Miss L. Potter  
__The Smallest Bedroom  
__4 Privet Drive  
__Little Whinging_  
Surrey

Laurel snorted to herself. She wondered if, had she not snuck out that night, this envelope might have something like _The Cupboard under the Stairs _written on it. She doubted anyone was spying on her house, let alone doing so well enough to tell which rooms were bigger than others! So it only made sense to suppose that her bedroom must have been identified by some kind of magic. Laurel hummed and mused to herself: would someone be working the spell, she wondered, see her old cupboard on the envelope, and think, _Well, that can't be right! Someone had better look into this!_ It was, perhaps, lucky for the Dursleys that Mr. Dumbledore had put an end to that nonsense when she was seven.

As she thought this, Laurel found what she had been looking for. There was an odd quality to the way the lines of the address were drawn. It didn't look like any sort of ball-point pen. Perhaps it was a fountain pen, but it might even have been a feather quill! The thought sent a thrill of excitement down Laurel's spine, and she turned the envelope back over, eager to read the message. She walked over to the small, old desk that sat by the window (a piece of furniture that had been left for her to use after all of Dudley's old things had been moved out). She sat down, licking her lips, and carefully extracted the letter from the envelope.

The parchment was thinner than the envelope, but it was still parchment, worthy of a diploma and degree display. She unfolded it, setting the envelope down on the desk, finding that there was a second sheet folded inside it. Pulling them apart, she glanced at the one in back and saw that it was a list of needed supplies, so she focused her attention on the letter first, setting the other down absently.

The letter was also written with a quill, although the ink was black rather than green. The heading caught her attention immediately; she almost gripped the letter hard enough to cause a wrinkle, in her surprise, and just barely managed to restrain herself.

**HOGWARTS SCHOOL**  
**_of _WITCHCRAFT _and _WIZARDRY**  
~  
**Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore**  
_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,  
_ _Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

Mr. Dumbledore was... the headmaster of the witch's school she was to attend? What on Earth kind of business could such an important person as that have had in a Little Whinging play park, and how could the Dursleys of all people have known him? Laurel leaned in, transfixed. The list of titles beneath his name only added to her bafflement. She had no idea what a Supreme Mugwump might be, but Merlin was a famous wizard in stories. Had he been real? So famous that even non-wizards knew about him and remembered him in stories? If that was the case, anything called "Order of Merlin, First Class" had to be an impressive title. "Grand Sorcerer" and "Chief Warlock" were obvious enough, but... oh my, Mr. Dumbledore was part of an International Confederation of Wizards, too? Was that like the wizarding version of the United Nations?

Such a person really had no business climbing playground oaks to chase down lost little girls. That would be like the Prime Minister rescuing cats out of trees, wouldn't it?

Bemused, Laurel continued to read the rest of the letter.

_Dear Miss Potter,_

_We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment._

_Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31._

_Yours sincerely,_   
_Minerva McGonagall_   
_Deputy Headmistress_

"Owl?" Laurel mumbled cluelessly, looking up to her currently-closed window. Since the letter had come through the mail slot, there was no owl. She knew that witches and wizards sent letters by owl, and had often wondered to herself how they trained owls to deliver messages. It was even stranger to think that an owl could carry a message to a written address, like the one on the envelope. Did it have to be told where to go before it set off? How would it find the correct house? Or was there something magical about the owl, was it a special kind of owl that needed to be used for sending letters?

Had this letter been sent by owl? Could an owl get a letter through a mail slot? Laurel grinned. If one of their neighbors saw something like that happen at the front door of number four, Aunt Petunia would have kittens.

How would she get a response back, though? As Laurel absentmindedly tipped the envelope onto her desk, dropping a small ticket for the Hogwarts Express onto the letter, a tapping at her window caught her attention and she looked up. There was an owl, a brown-and-white barn owl, perched precariously on the windowsill.

Laurel grinned, stood up, and let it in. It seemed very well-trained indeed, sitting quietly on the corner of her desk like a majestic, feathery ornament as she wrote her reply. She dug out a folder full of loose-leaf paper for school and a pen, wishing she could reply with the kind of fancy equipment the school used. Having folded her letter and set it aside, she laid the paper on her desk and began to write, as slowly and deliberately as she always did. Halfway through writing, she paused thoughtfully, and then unfolded the second sheet of paper, the supply list. Perusing it with her pen resting against her lower lip, she realized she had a problem, threw out the first attempt at her letter, and brought out another sheet, starting over.

Her handwriting had always gotten her praise in school, and other girls told her they wished they could write as pretty as she could. She wanted to make a good impression, so she made sure the letters were as elegant and dignified as they had ever been. It took three full drafts to produce something she was proud of, but when she was finished, she sat back, thinking with satisfaction that she had outdone even last year's book report on _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ this time.

_Dear Professor McGonagall,_

_I would like to graciously accept my reserved place at Hogwarts school. I have been waiting and hoping for this letter since I was seven, and am excited to take my first step into the wizarding world._

_It is with some embarrassment that I must request assistance taking my first steps into that world, however. My relatives are not witches or wizards, and have not hidden their dislike for them. I believe it may be their religion, and I would not force them to spend time around things that make them feel uncomfortable._

_So, would it be possible to ask if someone from Hogwarts can show me where I might buy my supplies? Obviously, I do not expect to find magic wands, potion ingredients, and books about secret magical history at the local thrift shop, but I have no idea where to go to buy them._

_I also do not have any money, and do not expect my aunt or uncle to be willing to pay. Since my mother was a witch, would there be any way to find out whether or not she left money for my schooling?_

_If you have the answers to these questions, please respond by owl. If it is possible for someone to guide me to a shop where I might purchase my books and such, let me know when it would be convenient to do so and I will meet that person outside the corner shop on Wisteria Walk. I believe that would be preferable to subjecting my dear aunt and uncle to a direct meeting with a witch or wizard._

_Respectfully,  
Laurel Euphemia Potter_

Obviously, she had twisted the truth about her relationship with the Dursleys. She didn't see any need to inform the school that the Durlseys only ever treated her with the minimum required level of politeness and had been utterly foul to her before Mr. Dumbledore (who she really should have been thinking of as Headmaster Dumbledore, she reminded herself) had forced even that much. There wasn't any point in telling the Deputy Headmistress about any of this, and she didn't want rumors spreading around the school, since she didn't need any help dealing with her relatives anymore.

Looking over the letter one more time, she nodded approvingly at her work and looked around, frowning. She didn't have any need for them, so she didn't have any envelopes for sending letters with. Folding the letter neatly into thirds and flattening it on her desk, she eyed the owl critically. If the letter was being delivered via carrier bird, did it need an envelope, or address, at all? Was the envelope perhaps a formality? Another thing used purely to make the acceptance letter a memorable event?

Then Laurel thought of another problem: what if the owl had to fly through the rain? Even an envelope wouldn't help then. Perhaps that was why they used such heavy parchment.

As if it could read her thoughts, the owl hopped across her desk toward her and stuck out a leg. She looked at it, bit her lip, then nodded.

"You want me to... tie it on?" she asked. To her surprise, the barn owl hooted what seemed to be an affirmative, and she jumped backward a bit, skidding her chair across the false hardwood floor a few inches. She stared at the owl, which did not react to her alarm, and then looked back down at her folded letter.

Nodding, she opened the side-desk drawer, digging around. She withdrew her hand, smiling in triumph, holding a red ball of yarn. She kept a few of these handy, nicked from Aunt Petunia's little-used sewing supplies, for those occasions when they would leave her at Mrs. Figg's house when they took Dudley out for his birthday trips. This practice had not ended with the arrival of Mr. Dumbledore, though Mrs. Figg had been less awful to stay with over the past few years.

Laurel had always loved spending time with Mrs. Figg's cats, though, so she'd made a yearly ritual of stealing a ball of yarn somewhere around September, hiding it away, and bringing it with her on Dudley's birthday. The cats loved it.

She dug out her pencil case and school scissors, unraveled a bit of yarn, and snipped it off. Then, carefully rolling up the letter into a short tube, she tied a sturdy knot around the middle, and then two more closer to the ends. Satisfied that it would not come loose if exposed to wind, she turned to the owl and tied the letter to its leg.

"You don't need an address to get this to Deputy Headmistress McGonagall, do you?" Laurel asked the owl as she doubled the little yarn knot.

Hooting its assurance that it did not need an address. The owl slowly ruffled its wings, turned to the window, and took off into the sky. Laurel stood and stooped by the window, sticking her head out to watch it fly away. When it was out of sight, she slid the window shut, and looked at her desk. Either the owl's claws had been filed, or it was very careful with how it trod on a witch's property, because it had left no marks behind after hopping across it.

Satisfied with this, she picked up the supply list and read through it properly. It bore the same _HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY _heading as the first across the top, which mystified Laurel a little. Did witches and wizards use printers? Could printers even work with parchment? She supposed there must be printers for all sorts of paper types, but somehow Laurel expected that the wizards' method for duplicating labels and headings had to be different. It was just too weird to think of wizards in an office, waiting by the printer for a thirty-eight page document about potion phial safety standards to be spat out three or four times...

...Come to think of it, if there was a wizarding school that did potions things, was there a regulatory body that did indeed have some sort of potion phial safety standard for school things? Laurel looked up from the letter, staring at the wall and trying to imagine wizards in government. Then she tried to imagine her uncle's face if she said the words "wizards in government" in front of him, and it took a while to suppress the mad laughing fit this inspired.

*** * ***

Laurel Potter received an answer from the Deputy Headmistress before she even went to bed, this time delivered to her bedroom window by the very same barn owl. The return letter had told Laurel that in three days' time, Professor McGonagall had already made plans to accompany another student on a similar outing to a place called Diagon Alley in London, and so if it was convenient she would come to collect Laurel then. She had also informed Laurel that her parents had indeed left her an inheritance, and that she would be able to afford her school supplies without trouble once they visited the wizards' bank (which was called Gringotts) to make a withdrawal.

Laurel sent a return owl saying that she would be at the corner store at the agreed-upon time, and had told her aunt and uncle when she was going out to do her school shopping over dinner that night. The conversation had been stiff and unpleasant, and she had opened it quite bluntly:

"On Friday morning, I will be going to London," Laurel had said as she wrapped her fork in a healthy mouthful of angel hair pasta. "I will be meeting the Deputy Headmistress on the way and she will be taking me to buy my school things."

Uncle Vernon (who was large and in charge, or at the very least "fat," with black hair and a mustache) had spluttered; Aunt Petunia (thin, blonde, and distractingly long in the neck) had remained tight-lipped and rigid. Laurel didn't know why Uncle Vernon was so surprised. He'd given her the letter himself.

But then he said, "I'm not paying for you to go to that — that school."

Laurel turned her head toward him and stuffed her forkful of pasta into her waiting mouth, raising an eyebrow in question.

"I've been thinking it over, and I'm not doing it," Uncle Vernon said through his teeth, black mustache quivering with a bit of pasta butter shining on one of the whiskers. "You'll continue your schooling at Stonewall and you'll like it. And if you want to go off and mess about with — with that lot when you're a legal adult, then you can go do as you please when you're out of our hair and you can pay for it yourself."

Laurel withdrew the fork from her mouth and looked calmly up at the ceiling, savoring the buttered noodles. Aunt Petunia was looking very obstinate and cross across the table from her, but her cooking, as usual, was gloriously good.

"I can pay for myself," she said simply, after swallowing. It was rude to talk with her mouth full, after all, and this was a nice blouse.

Aunt Petunia stared at her. Uncle Vernon's mouth opened and closed like a beached fish. Then Dudley, the far-too-large blonde boy sitting next to her, turned his fat butt in his chair and stared at her in clear, stupid disbelief. "How can you pay for school?!" he blurted out. It was the most words he'd spoken to her in succession for around three months. Dudley had made fun of her for being an ugly girl when she was younger, but he and his friends had always just kept away from her and he'd mostly just ignored her since Mr. Dumbledore had talked to his parents. Laurel guessed they had made it clear to him that he was not to bother her.

Aunt Petunia let out a soft, strangled sound in her throat, and Laurel turned her attention back to her. She'd brought this up at the dinner table precisely because she, Aunt Petunia, and Uncle Vernon had an accord: the "M" word was not to be mentioned around Dudley. He was not to know anything. This was their condition for allowing her full-sized helpings and seconds at meals, continuing to buy her nice new clothes, and not giving her grief over her clearly-better-than-Dudley marks at school.

"My parents left me an education bond," Laurel lied smoothly. "As I understand it, it can only be used at this school. So, it's quite worthless for anything else."

Aunt Petunia's eyes showed understanding. She looked at Uncle Vernon. "If the girl can pay her own way," the thin, horsey-looking woman said, "then there's no reason to keep her in the house, Vernon."

Laurel smiled wanly and twirled her fork on her plate, gathering up another mouthful of noodles. Her aunt was already slipping back into the old habit: talking about her as if she wasn't there. It was probably a mark of how much inner turmoil the subject of Hogwarts caused that she was speaking thus, because she'd been quite good about not doing it until now.

Uncle Vernon grunted, and fixed Laurel with a narrow-eyed glare. "Fine, then," he growled. With a half-glance at Dudley, he added: "You go to London, collect your school things, and lock them in the cupboard when you get back."

Laurel raised her eyebrows again, considering this. Oh, so they didn't want her studying magic at home, did they? Well, that wouldn't do. Laurel meant very much to collect just as much praise from her teachers at Hogwarts as she had from primary school. She wasn't about to let the Dursleys sabotage that if she could help it.

"I might need to do homework when I come back for the holidays... and I'd like to read up on my subjects so that I can make a good start," Laurel said, keeping her voice only slightly put-out. "Can't I take my things up into my room, Uncle?"

It was Aunt Petunia who spoke up now, causing Dudley to goggle at her in alarm: "I will not have that nonsense in my house!" she snapped. "You'll keep your school things in the cupboard if you want to keep them at all!"

To which Laurel said brightly, "Oh, that's right, I forgot! The headmaster is a man named Albus Dumbledore. I think you mentioned a name like that, didn't you? Not a very common name. You think it's the same person?"

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon both went a little whiter as Laurel went on. This was especially noticeable in Uncle Vernon's case, because he'd been working up a bit of steam and had been a familiar blotchy red a moment before. There was fear and confusion in their eyes, the latter probably because they didn't know that she too had met Mr. Dumbledore that day.

Laurel, twirling her fork in her noodles again, said cheerfully, "If I go back to school after the holidays and have to tell my teachers that I wasn't allowed to have my school things with me — "

"Alright!" Uncle Vernon barked in a panic. Then, visibly trying to calm himself: "You can keep your ruddy... school books in your room. You go to London and meet this Deputy Headmistress and do as you please. There will be no need for the... faculty... to visit us in our home."

Dudley turned a disbelieving look on his father. Laurel glanced sidelong at him and had to suppress a giggle. He was deaf and dumb to the whole situation, and Laurel could practically see the rusty, little-used gears turning in his skull's cobweb-dusted brain cavity, creaking out a question: why was his father caving in just because the school faculty might send some rude notes? Laurel brought a forkful of pasta to her smiling lips, looking at her aunt and uncle innocently.

"Thanks! You're the best, Uncle Vernon! You too, Aunt Petunia."

Uncle Vernon _did_ take her aside later to growl at her about not actually doing any freak hocus-pocus under his roof, but as she hadn't planned on doing that anyway, Laurel just smiled and gave her uncle a promise not to cause trouble. And so the next few days passed without incident.

*** * ***

Friday the twenty-sixth arrived. Laurel was very nearly late to the corner store on the day she was to meet the Deputy Headmistress. They had agreed upon ten in the morning, as Professor McGonagall was set to meet and guide the as-yet-unnamed family on a shopping trip to Diagon Alley at eleven-thirty. They would go to the wizards' bank, then have lunch, and then she would take them all to the shops that carried the books and equipment they would need for their first year at Hogwarts. Laurel had been excited to meet the Deputy Headmistress because it was her first real chance to talk at length with a witch or wizard, but she'd had (as usual) a lot of taming her bedhead this morning.

Surely cursed at birth by some kind of dark sorcerer who hated little girls and kicked puppies for fun, Laurel had come to understand that the hair she had growing out of her head was wretched and evil. She kept it clean and shining, of course, but it was neither gracefully straight nor pleasingly wavy nor jauntily curly. It was just _everywhere_. If she didn't take the time to spray it down and comb it down and tie it tight into a ponytail every morning, it just became a wild, beastly mess that went where it pleased and pleased no one.

One of the earliest concessions that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had made for her, years before Mr. Dumbledore happened, was ensuring that she had a bottle of hair spray and a comb and that she took care of her hair every day without fail. Probably they had done this because they had known people would talk if their niece went to school looking like the monster from a horror movie about a demon child. If she'd been a boy, Laurel imagined they'd either have let it be or cut it off. For some reason boys didn't really bother making their hair look nice, she had noticed. Uncle Vernon and Dudley both combed their hair, but a lot of the boys at school didn't bother with it. Laurel didn't know why nice hair was so much more important for girls, but it was, and under the established rule of law at number four ("don't ask questions") she hadn't yet been able to guess at why.

The answer wasn't important enough to her to spend the energy talking with her aunt, anyway. Whatever the answer was, it wouldn't change the amount of time it took to get her hair to stay put in the morning: almost half an hour. She'd tried braiding it once, figuring that might make it behave better, but it had been a disaster, and a painful one. Her hair really was a terror. When she figured out which of her parents had given it to her, she meant to find their grave and spit on it.

Oh well. At least she had pretty eyes. Green was such a nice color.

Finally having gotten it sorted out at around nine forty or so, Laurel set out at a half-jog down Privet Drive with her backpack strapped on. It was bare and full of air, of course, ripe and ready for filling with some interesting stuff. At that half-jog, Laurel managed to almost-run the whole way without losing her breath completely, and when she arrived her watch said she had two minutes to spare.

No one was waiting outside the store yet. She breathed a sigh of relief, silently cursed her foul hair one more time, and stood straight, folding her hands in front of her legs and waiting patiently for the Deputy Headmistress. She was wearing her nicest cream-colored blouse and aqua skirt, and had snapped a white butterfly hair-clip over the tie that kept her ponytail from escaping and rampaging across the English countryside; she was sure she would make a good impression when Professor McGonagall arrived.

It didn't take long. Laurel didn't look at her watch when she noticed the woman step out of the alley that connected Wisteria Walk to Magnolia Crescent and strode purposefully in her direction, for fear of appearing rude, but she suspected that it was ten o' clock on the dot. Laurel smiled hopefully and turned toward the woman, keeping her hands primly folded. The woman, who looked to be sixty or seventy perhaps (old enough to be a grandmother, anyway, and young enough for her hair to still have its color) met Laurel's eyes and smiled a faint, warm smile, just enough by Laurel's reckoning to count as a confirmation that this was indeed Minerva McGonagall.

As the woman approached, Laurel unclasped her hands and dipped into a gracious curtsy, feeling a secret burst of glee: she'd always wanted to curtsy at someone, but before now had never had occasion to. It made her feel like a real lady.

Professor McGonagall's smile grew just a bit. "Miss Potter, I presume," she said. "It is good to finally make your acquaintance."

Laurel let her skirt drop from her fingers and clasped her hands again, smiling brightly up at the professor. "I've been looking forward to meeting you, Professor McGonagall," she said. "Except for that time Headmaster Dumbledore came to talk to me, I haven't had a chance to speak to a real witch or wizard before. And Mister... er, Professor Dumbledore, I mean, didn't stay long, so that wasn't much at all."

Professor McGonagall looked a little surprised. "I wasn't aware Professor Dumbledore had visited you," she said.

Though she kept her feelings hidden, Laurel relaxed a bit: it had occurred to her that the Deputy Headmistress might have known about her aunt and uncle's mistreatment of her, through Mr. Dumbledore, but it seemed the old man had kept it to himself. That was a relief. Laurel wanted Professor McGonagall to think of her as a normal student, not some kind of sympathy case. And she didn't want any of the teachers going easy on her in lessons, either.

"Well, we met by chance at the park," she lied. "I was reading a book in my favorite tree and he came up to meet me. He must have seen me up there and wondered what I was doing sitting in the branches of an old oak. He gave me a book as a present and I've kept it ever since. Do you know him very well, ma'am?"

Turning toward the road, Professor McGonagall nodded. "We have been colleagues for a long time. He was my Head of Department when I first took up my post as Transfiguration professor."

Before Laurel could ask what Transfiguration was (she guessed it might mean the same thing as "transformation," but she wanted to be sure), Professor McGonagall raised a hand toward the empty street as if hailing a taxi.

_BANG._

Laurel nearly jumped out of her skin. Far more alarming than the loud noise was the enormous triple-decker bus that had screeched to a stop at the curb in front of Professor McGonagall. It was purple, reminding her of the man in the purple top hat, and unless Laurel was mistaken this had to be the first real magic that she had seen with her own two eyes, because the bus had _appeared out of nowhere the moment before it had stopped at the curb._

Had it been invisible, she wondered as she goggled at the bus like an idiot, all pretense of ladylike poise gone with the wind. Or had Professor McGonagall summoned it somehow with magic? Had it exploded into existence from nothing, or from somewhere else entirely?

The moment she gathered enough of her wits to stop staring, Laurel's eyes darted instinctively to the golden letters over the driver's front windshield. _The Knight Bus_, they said. Laurel snorted, loudly.

"That's a _terrible _pun," she said without thinking. The boy who sat in the next desk over at primary school class had loved making bad jokes, so Laurel had quite an ear for terrible puns, and that one was indeed terrible.

Professor McGonagall looked to Laurel in surprise, then followed her eyes to the windshield just as the bus's side-door opened. "I've always thought so," she admitted, just as a man in a purple conductor's uniform stepped out of the bus and began to speak, cutting across any further pun-related conversation they might have made.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard," the man recited. "Just stick out your wand hand, step on board, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this morn— oh, blimey. Is it Professor McGonagall?"

The pimply conductor stood up straighter, looking a little anxious. Laurel noted he was quite pimply, and looked like he might even been a teenager. His ears were amusingly big and obvious. She kind of wanted to pull on them.

Professor McGonagall replied crisply, "It is good to see you again, Mr. Shunpike. Miss Potter and I will be going to the Leaky Cauldron today."

For a few moments Stan Shunpike stared at Professor McGonagall, and slowly his stare became a full-on goggle of wonder. Then his eyes darted to Laurel, and then, to Laurel's forehead. Laurel had to fight back a grimace. Her lightning-shaped scar was always on full display over her left eye, and she hated it, but the alternative was to let her fringe hang over her forehead to conceal it. And that would have been an even bigger disaster.

"Blimey," Shunpike said, more faintly this time. Then, waving his arms wildly behind him in a beckoning motion: "Oi, Ern! Ern! C'mere! Look who it is, Ern!"

Laurel, confused, looked quickly to Professor McGonagall, whose lips had gone quite dangerously thin. Momentarily thrown off by this expression — Laurel was suddenly sure she never wanted to get on the Deputy Headmistress's bad side — she didn't manage to ask her intended question, which was, _Has the good conductor gone mad?_

An old-looking wizard in thick glasses emerged from the bus's drivers area, and Laurel sincerely hoped he wasn't really the driver, because he looked blind as a mole wearing a blindfold to her. He stared at her so blankly that she wondered if he really couldn't see her, either. Then Shunpike yelled, "Oi, you'll never believe who it is!" more loudly still. "It's Laurel Potter! The bleedin' Girl 'Oo Lived!"

Utterly nonplussed, Laurel stood unmoving as several people scrambled to the front of the bus, crowding around behind Stan Shunpike and craning to get a look over his head and shoulders. Craning to get a look... at _her_.

Laurel, feeling suddenly self-conscious and wrong-footed, smiled nervously and dipped into her second-ever polite curtsy. She straightened up much more quickly than she'd meant to, turned to ask Professor McGonagall what this was about, but jumped back a full pace and two of the wizards shoved past Shunpike on both sides at once. The first to reach her, the one on the left, snatched up one of her hands and clasped it in both of his. He was a squat little wide-eyed man in his twenties, and he was unapologetically wearing a wizards' robes. Aquamarine with white trim. She stared at his clothes, feeling her arm yanked up and down by his hearty handshake.

"Laurel Potter! What an honor!" the man said. "Welcome back, welcome back!"

The second man took the same hand kissed it, as if she were some sort of maiden princess instead of an eleven-year-old desperately trying to hide her horrid hair.

"Oh, my word, this is just the most amazing coincidence. I never dreamed I'd meet the savior of the wizarding world on the Knight Bus of all places..."

"Oi!" protested Shunpike halfheartedly. He had stepped back and was leaning against the bus, wearing a half-grin that said he was quite enjoying the chaos he'd sparked. By now, the remaining passengers had all disembarked, including a few who hadn't been on the first floor when Shunpike had called out, and they crowded around her. Most of them were in robes of varying colors, although one of them was clad in mismatched dark-green plaid trousers and a truly terrifying button-up shirt patterned with cartoon beagles and dog bones that looked like it might have been children's pajamas sized up for an adult. One by one, they shook his hand, some of them introducing themselves, making Laurel's head spin.

_What was that about me being a savior or something? _Laurel thought, thoroughly bamboozled.

"You'll be starting at Hogwarts then? Perhaps you'd be so good as to look in on my little brother, he's in fifth year, he'd just love an autograph—"

"I've heard you were raised by Muggle relatives, is that true?"

"...It's really there, like lightning..." she caught through her daze, and snapped out of it to look at the woman who'd spoken, a witch who was dressed in a travelling cloak and looked rather green. Laurel took a breath and smiled faintly at her. The woman hadn't approached to seize Laurel's hand, probably because she was feeling ill... she looked it, Laurel thought.

"It's... been really great meeting you all," Laurel managed to cut in between handshakes. "But it really smart to be out in the open in robes with a big old magic bus out here and all?"

"Muggles!" scoffed Stan Shunpike. "Don' look properly. Don' listen properly, either. Never notice nuffink, they don'."

"What Mr. Shunpike _means_ to say," Professor McGonagall said evenly, as if trying to hold in her temper, is that there are protective enchantments around the Knight Bus that prevent Muggles from taking notice of it, or of witches and wizards gathered around it... though it would not be wise to test the strength of those spells with so many of us at one time."

She looked at Shunpike sternly over her square spectacles. Shunpike coughed into his fist and announced awkwardly, "Right then, all aboard! Got a schedule to keep, an' all."

The passengers shuffled back into the bus one by one, the ill-looking witch hovering to wait for Professor McGonagall and Laurel to board even after all the others had gone. Had it been anyone else, Laurel would have suspected it was someone being creepy and trying to stay close to her, but Laurel rather thought this witch was just reluctant to get back on the bus and reignite her motion sickness.

"And in you get, Madam Marsh! 'Ere we go," Shunpike said as he waved the ill-looking witch onto the bus. When she had taken a seat (and the bus was filled with seats, none of which seemed to be attached to anything and all of which looked like they belonged in a kitchen rather than on a bus), Stan Shunpike turned to Professor McGonagall.

"Eleven Sickles each," he said. "For firteen, you get 'ot chocolate, and—"

"No, thank you," Professor McGonagall said shortly. She reached into her handbag and extracted a small handful of silver coins that Laurel didn't recognize, and handed them to the conductor. "Go 'head and pick any seat you like. You was raised by Muggles, right? You're in for a treat, then." He pointed to the old man in the thick glasses, who was sitting in what looked like a living room armchair in front of the steering wheel. "This is our driver, Ernie Prang."

Laurel smiled politely and tried not to look too exasperated by the clinically-blind-looking man who was in charge of driving magical public transport for some reason. She should probably be more open-minded about that, she thought. For all Laurel knew, the glasses might be magic and might even give him better vision than she did. Not for the first time, though, Laurel was glad she had perfect eyesight. She didn't need glasses, so she didn't have to worry about giving other people these kinds of impressions herself.

Eager to see for herself how a magic disappearing, reappearing triple-decker bus worked, Laurel claimed one of the seats by the front, next to the motion-sick Madam Marsh, who seemed to have chosen her place purely because she didn't feel up to moving any great distance just now. Professor McGonagall withdrew a long, thin wooden stick from her handbag, and Laurel realized with a thrill that it was a magic wand. Hoping to see Professor McGonagall use magic, she watched with bated breath. But all Professor McGonagall did was point her wand at the floor near Laurel's chair, then the floor beneath her own, then after a considering pause, at the floor beneath Madam Marsh's chair.

Disappointed, Laurel gave Professor McGonagall a questioning look. But at that moment she heard Shunpike say behind McGonagall, "Take 'er away, Ern," and Laurel understood why McGonagall had been pointing her want at the floor... or, more specifically, at the chair legs.

_BANG._

And every seat in the place except for the three they were sitting on slid backward as the bus lurched violently forward. Laurel sat staring at McGonagall with what now felt like a very stupid, wind-whipped look on her face. A pair of hands, Madam Marsh's in fact, had caught her by the shoulders in the nick of time and prevented her from flopping directly into the poor woman and adding insult to motion-sickness.

"Oh," Laurel said, most intellectually.

She looked at Madam Marsh, gave her a smile of thanks, and turned to look out the window across from her. Laurel's eyes widened. They were in a completely different place, somewhere in the countryside. Mountains. Laurel could see mountains.

"This is where we was before you flagged us down," he said. "Where are we, Ern? Scotland? Not far from 'Ogwarts, I reckon."

"Ar, passed Hogsmeade at the last stop," Ernie Prang grunted.

Well, Laurel thought faintly, at least she knew what part of the country Hogwarts was in now. Laurel turned to Professor McGonagall.

"If the bus can jump from Scotland to Surrey in a blink and back again, why are we actually driving anywhere?" she asked immediately, although what she'd actually _meant _to ask was why she'd been crowded by a whole bunch of star-struck witches and wizards outside the bus.

Professor McGonagall looked at her appraisingly, as if impressed by the question. Then she said, "The magic that works the bus is quite complex, so I'm not sure you would understand the theory behind it until you have quite a few years at Hogwarts under your belt. But the short answer is that it is impossible to create a magical object that can mimic Apparition."

"What's that?" Laurel asked, interested.

"It is magic that enables a witch or wizard to travel instantaneously to nearly any location they wish, within limits," Professor McGonagall answered, with the air of giving a well-practiced lecture. "Since your birthday is in the summer, you will be eligible for lessons during your sixth year. But it is difficult magic, and not all witches and wizards are proficient at it. Hence the need for alternative transporation: the Floo Network, and the Knight Bus."

"Flu network?" Laurel asked, then shook her head. "Never mind. You said it's impossible to make objects do that apparition thing. What's that mean for this bus?"

Professor McGonagall smiled slightly. "There are objects that can be spelled to enable instantaneous transportation, but they must be made with specific locations or rules. They simply aren't flexible enough to go anywhere at any time. In the case of the Knight Bus, which is a highly advanced example, the Bus can only travel instantly to a witch or wizard who flags it down, and then back to its original point of departure. Otherwise, it must travel its set route, the same as any Muggle bus."

"That word again," Laurel noted. "Muggle, you said. What's 'Muggle' mean?"

Professor McGonagall answered without batting an eye. "Non-magic citizens. Your aunt and uncle are Muggles. And you were quite right before, to point out that we shouldn't gather in the open where Muggles can see us. Not without dressing to blend in."

The professor gestured with her free hand, indicating the dark-gray dress she wore, which together with her stern expression and tight bun gave her the look of a strict librarian.

"I don't know that all of us do so well at blending in," Laurel noted, allowing herself an amused giggle. "Professor Dumbledore had some really strange boots on when I met him. And there's this man in a purple top hat that I've seen before, and I think someone else saw him too..."

Professor McGonagall huffed out a sigh, and Madam Marsh groaned in exasperation, drawing Laurel's attention to her.

"Dedalus Diggle," Madam Marsh said in a long-suffering way. "He never listens to my advice about Muggle clothes."

"Some witches and wizards," Professor McGonagall said with the air of one trying not to speak ill of an acquaintance, "distance themselves from Muggle society to a point where they really have no idea how Muggles dress, behave, or go about doing anything. Children can be even more sheltered, if their parents live in wizarding communities. Don't be surprised if you meet students at Hogwarts who don't know what a telephone is."

Laurel looked around, and noted with an absentminded sort of wonder that as she looked to the front of the bus, they entered a wooded area, and the trees were leaping out of the way to allow the Knight Bus passage, because Ernie Prang had strayed off the side of the road. She looked back, and saw through the distant rear windows that the trees were leaping back into place.

"But you have a magic bus," Laurel observed reasonably as she watching this bizarre sight, trees jumping back into the ground like a television video scene of dominoes falling played in reverse.

Madam Marsh let out an unhappy-sounding snort of humorless laughter, put a handkerchief to her mouth, and said through it, "Some wizards are so stuck in their ways that they don't agree with having even that much."

Professor McGonagall nodded. "Back in the late eighteen-hundreds, when the Knight Bus was introduced, some wizards saw it as an affront to take influence from Muggle advancements."

Another snort came from Madam Marsh. "Bloody idiots," she said, sounding a little sicker now. "The only reason we have toilets is because we looked at Muggle plumbing and realized it was a better idea to use those than to trust everyone to do Vanishings properly. We were better off than Muggles with their buckets and latrines, but not by much."

"I'd forgotten," Professor McGonagall remarked. "You were one of the top History of Magic students in your day."

Madam Marsh grunted. "Old Binns still teaching?"

"And still getting the students' names wrong," Professor McGonagall confirmed.

Intrigued, Laurel leaned back as the two witches began to fall into a somewhat uneasy conversation, which Madam Marsh seemed grateful for, as it appeared to be distracting her from her illness somewhat. Deciding to put the questions about her apparent fame to the side for now, Laurel listened and occasionally voiced a thought or question as Madam Marsh reminisced about her time at Hogwarts and described some of her recent travels: apparently she worked as a private tutor for wizarding families who did not want to send their children to Hogwarts or other wizarding schools, or who couldn't for one reason or another. When Laurel asked why that might be, Madam Marsh apologetically said that it was always confidential when she accepted such a job, and McGonagall filled in by saying that sometimes families disagreed with school policies and sometimes there were issues of magical illness that made it difficult or impossible for a child to attend a boarding school.

Still others, McGonagall added, were older witches and wizards who had failed their exams too many times and needed to complete their educations independently, although she also added that this was rare.

Laurel managed to learn quite a bit about Hogwarts. Apparently it was a castle on a mountain, overlooking a lake... there was a huge forest on the grounds that students were forbidden to enter, because it was home to vicious magical beasts, and also the territory of a centaur herd, who were a proud race that didn't take kindly to witches and wizards intruding on them without invitation. There were merpeople in the lake — mermaids were a real thing! — and house-elves in the kitchens to prepare marvelous feasts for special occasions and hearty meals for the day-to-day. Laurel was distracted from asking what a house-elf was by Madam Marsh's reminiscence about her time with Ravenclaw House, which prompted Laurel to ask what the Houses were.

This question came up as the Knight Bus came to a stop in an Irish village. Professor McGonagall adjusted her spectacles after a particularly violent stop, and when the bus resumed motion with a somewhat less devastating lurch, Madam Marsh pressed the handkerchief to her mouth more tightly and closed her eyes. So it fell to the professor to answer the question.

"The four Houses at Hogwarts are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each is named after the four founders of the school, and each has its own admirable history. Some will tell you that one house is better or worse than another, but for every witch or wizard that swears by one, you'll find one who favors each other of others. Students are sorted into one of these Houses at the start of their first year at Hogwarts. It is something like your family, while you're there. Your behavior and your triumphs reflect on your House, and there is also competition in other areas, such as the Quidditch Cup..."

_Quidditch_, Laurel thought. _Really. And what does THAT wacky word mean?_ There had been a lot of wacky words spoken that meant absolutely nothing to her, she had noticed.

"Four houses," Laurel echoed. "Is that why the envelope had animals on it? On the coat of arms, I mean."

Professor McGonagall started to nod, but the bus lurched to the side and interrupted her. "Yes. Those are the emblems of the Houses. Gryffindor is represented by a lion, Hufflepuff by a badger, Ravenclaw by an eagle, and Slytherin by a snake."

"Hm... so that's what it is! I'd like to learn more about the Houses and their history, if I can," Laurel said. "It must be a really old school to have been built in a castle."

Madam Marsh nodded, but then Shunpike (who had spent this whole time escorting passengers to and from the exit as the bus continued to stop and start) said: "Almost at your stop, Madam Marsh!" A look of intense relief came over the witch's face and she put her head down.

Professor McGonagall reached over Laurel and rubbed little circles on Madam Marsh's back. Conversation did not resume until Madam Marsh had disembarked, wobbling, with the assistance of Stan Shunpike. When they were alone at the front, Laurel glanced toward the back of the bus, where some of the passengers (including the few that had boarded in the time since they'd gotten on) were glancing her way in wonder and awe every so often.

"S-so, um... Professor McGonagall," Laurel said, fidgeting in her seat and nearly unbalancing because of it. She steadied herself, gripped the sides, and looked at the professor. "Am I, um... am I famous?"

The woman's lips tightened, she stared straight ahead, and eventually said, "That is a discussion we should have in private, Miss Potter. Perhaps after we have finished the shopping and the Grangers have gone on their way."

"Is that the family we're going to meet?" Laurel asked, interested enough not to feel too resentful about having to wait for her answers. She was wondering what a wizarding family might be like, but then Professor McGonagall said:

"Indeed. It is my duty as Deputy Headmistress to help acquaint Muggle-born students with the magical world, so I will be helping Mr. and Mrs. Granger learn their way around Diagon Alley."

"It must be really strange for Muggles when the Hogwarts letter gets dropped in their mail," Laurel mused. "If it were me, I'd probably think someone was playing a joke."

Professor McGonagall nodded. "That is why I am tasked with visiting such families to deliver their letter in person," she said, "or assigning other members of staff to do so, to give them proof, and a detailed explanation, and to assist them in getting their child ready to attend if asked. Your aunt knows about our world, however, so that was not thought necessary in your case. But it is not unheard of for Muggles to hold such reservations when their child shows magical talent..."

The professor trailed off, frowning.

Laurel prompted, "What if the family is strongly against their child being magic?" Like her own relatives had been, she thought but didn't say.

Professor McGonagall smiled tightly.

"Sometimes, if the situation is benign, we are forced to bow to the parents' wishes," she said. "The child must wait until they reach their majority according to Muggle law before they can seek magical instruction. In a case where a witch or wizard's child was left in the care of non-magical relatives, the child's decision could overrule the guardian's so long as a financial solution could be found that did not place a burden on their Muggle caretakers."

"Like in my case," Laurel said. Then she asked, leaning in a little (and wobbling as she nearly lost balance in her seat again): "And if the situation isn't benign?"

Professor McGonagall sighed.

"There are situations in which the Ministry of Magic must step in..." she said grimly, "...and in some rare cases take a magical child away from non-magical relatives. That is only in the worst cases, however. There are more dangers in leaving a magical child to suffer under such care than just the danger to themselves."

"They might accidentally detach their guardian's chin and attach it to the seat of his trousers, you mean," Laurel said wisely, sitting back and nodding in understanding. Professor McGonagall looked over at her with an expression that might have been either stern or amused, and shook her head.

"That is one of many possible ways in which things can end badly," Professor McGonagall said. "Thankfully, it doesn't come up often."

Laurel nodded. "So I guess these are some of the friendlier Muggles, if they're going shopping for wands and cauldrons and things," she said rhetorically.

Professor McGonagall nodded an affirmative, the bus gave another lurch as it stopped to pick up a passenger in Ireland and then resumed its journey with a _BANG_ in Wales, and the professor said, "Yes, I'd say so. I haven't had such a calm meeting with a Muggle-born's parents in years. And their daughter is just as inquisitive as you are."

Laurel Potter and Professor McGonagall lapsed into a comfortable silence then. Laurel turned to watch the scenery out the front of the bus, an excited grin slowly spreading across her face, her mind a rush of wild imaginings of what wizard shops must be like, and what a wizarding bank would be like, and what she might possibly see in Diagon Alley if this crazy magic bus was anything to go by.

She was going to fill her backpack with some interesting stuff, indeed! And it sounded like other first-year girl she was going to be tagging along with today might just be someone Laurel could get along with. When this thought occurred to her, shortly before the Knight Bus crossed into England, Laurel crossed her fingers hopefully under her chair and smiled.

Either way, Laurel knew that this was going to be a day that she remembered forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> And there we have it: the first real chapter. You will notice that the timing of Laurel's trip to Diagon Alley is about half a week earlier than Harry's. Her Hogwarts acceptance letter arrives through the mail-slot on the same date it did for Harry in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, however (assuming that I have not counted incorrectly backwards from his birthday, July 31, anyway; if I have, I'll slip back in later and correct the dates).
> 
> This is not a frivolous change. My approach with regards to canon events in this story is very much that of the Butterfly Effect. Since Laurel did not have to go through the insane runaround and delay Harry experienced in "The Letters from No One," she was able to get to Diagon Alley more quickly. This means, however, that she will not be going on her birthday (which is still July 31), and she will not meet Draco Malfoy or Professor Quirrell while she is there, which in turn means that other events in later chapters will play out differently. It is likely she would not have met Draco Malfoy either way, though, since I think it unlikely that Madam Malkin would fitted a boy and a girl for robes at the same time in the same room. But not meeting Quirrell at Diagon Alley will, of course, have repercussions on the information Laurel has to work with later on the year. Quirrell's canon attempt to steal the Philosopher's Stone from Gringotts will still happen on July 31, and Hagrid will still be sent to retrieve it, without the added duty of finding and escorting Harry Potter in the same trip.
> 
> Many fanfiction writers stick pretty close to canon events for the duration of a story, or alternatively go out of their way to wrap up complicated parts of the canon plot early so that they do not have to deal with the continuity chaos that allowing plot threads to persist in a wholly altered timeline would cause. I do not blame them for that. That said, I view that chaotic consequence to changing the Harry Potter timeline without altering those canon elements to be an interesting challenge.
> 
> As an addendum: I do not know to what precise extent Professor McGonagall escorting Hermione and her parents to Diagon Alley fits with canon. In attempting to learn more canonical information about this, all I was able to confirm was that a member of staff would visit a family to deliver their letter personally, and assist as needed in helping them buy school supplies and otherwise prepare. What staff member may have visited Hermione is not, as far as I know, specified in any canon source. I am using Professor McGonagall here because otherwise Laurel would have, as a Slytherin, less reason to interact with her favorably; and also because it would make sense for Professor McGonagall to volunteer to escort Laurel, as with exception to Laurel's gender being different, the events of that first "The Boy Who Lived" chapter in Book One are assumed here to have played out in exactly the same way.
> 
> Of less consequence here, Laurel also does not meet Dedalus Diggle at the Leaky Cauldron in this timeline, although I did throw in mention of a situation Diggle might have gotten involved in that would have drawn a bit of Muggle attention to him (and exasperation at his inability to blend in with Muggle society, from his acquaintances). I am not sure if Diggle will ever play a significant role in this fanfic series, but he was a memorable background character and I wanted to acknowledge him in some small way and perhaps display a bit of personal merit that might have led him to join the Order of the Phoenix, since we only really see him in a comical role when he appears in the books.
> 
> — Lewis Medeiros,  
November 18th, 2019 at 3:10 PM


	3. Chapter Two: At the Crossing of Acacia and Vine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joined by the Muggle-born witch-to-be Hermione Granger and her Muggle parents, Laurel and Professor McGonagall take care of business at the many wizarding shops of Diagon Alley. Laurel learns some things about her family and her past, some of it good, some of it... not so much. And then, the time finally comes to visit Ollivanders, to buy her first wand.

**\- Chapter Two -  
"At the Crossing of Acacia and Vine"**

* * *

**T**eacher and student disembarked at the curb on what Professor McGonagall had said, when asked where they would be stopping, was Charing Cross Road in London. There, she had told Laurel, they would find a famous wizard-run pub that stood between the Muggle streets and the entrance to Diagon Alley.

As she stepped off the bus behind the bespectacled old witch, Laurel grinned blandly to herself, wondering what the wizarding world loved so much about bad puns. Diagon Alley? She would have to look up the words later to see if they had any other meanings that might have something magical going on, but she was pretty sure it was just a play on "diagonally."

As they stepped out of the bus, none of the pedestrians noticed them or the bus, as Laurel had learned to expect. Laurel brought out a sheet of folded, lined paper onto which she had copied her equipment list, unfolded it, and when Professor McGonagall looked to her and raised her eyebrows in question, Laurel shrugged. "I wanted the letter for a souvenir," she admitted, feeling a bit of heat in her cheeks. "Besides, I had a thought that no one would think it weird if a little girl had a paper she'd written stuff about witches on."

She held the paper out for McGonagall to see. Since the professor had received and answered her return letters three days before, Laurel thought it would be easy for her to tell that Laurel had intentionally made her handwriting blockier and sloppier, like what she saw the Muggles do in primary school.

The list was, however, otherwise a perfect copy of the text from the original list:

UNIFORM  
First-year students will require:  
1\. Three sets of plain work robes (black)  
2\. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear  
3\. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)  
4\. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)  
Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry name tags

COURSE BOOKS  
All students should have a copy of each of the following:  
_The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)_ by Miranda Goshawk  
_A History of Magic_ by Bathilda Bagshot  
_Magical Theory_ by Adalbert Waffling  
_A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration_ by Emeric Switch  
_One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ by Phyllida Spore  
_Magical Draughts and Potions_ by Arsenius Jigger  
_Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ by Newt Scamander  
_The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_ by Quentin Trimble

OTHER EQUIPMENT  
1 wand  
1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)  
1 set glass or crystal phials  
1 telescope  
1 set brass scales  
Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad

The only thing missing was the note about first-years not being allowed their own brooms, which Laurel didn't expect she'd need with a teacher from the school walking with her. All of this was surrounded by little doodles of witches on broomsticks, pumpkin Jack-o-lanterns, and cauldrons with wavy steam-lines floating above them, in differently-colored inks. Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrows at this. "That's hardly necessary," she said, "but it's good that you try to think of ways to keep things secret. It's a fine idea. If anyone looks over and sees you reading it, they would probably think you're playing pretend." She turned her eyes from the letter to Laurel. "But where we're going, the only ones who would see it are those who already know."

Laurel smiled sheepishly, looked over the list again as the bus vanished behind her with a _BANG._ Then she looked around. "So how do we get into Diagon Alley?" she asked.

"We'll be waiting here for a little while yet," Professor McGonagall answered. "The Granger family should be along soon. I'll show you all into the Leaky Cauldron at the same time."

So Laurel and Professor McGonagall moved to wait near what must surely be the pub in question. It was small and grubby and nothing much to look at next to the big book shop next to it (which Laurel made a note of, so she could hail the Knight Bus and go book-shopping later) or the record shop on the opposite side (which Laurel was far less interested in). Laurel first thought that it was so dingy-looking to keep Muggles from wanting to check it out, but she looked around for a bit to see how this was working and it looked a lot like most of the pedestrians didn't see the place at all, or if they did, whatever they saw was even less interesting than what _she_ could see. Magic, she guessed, like the spells that kept them from noticing the Knight Bus. And then she chided herself for not thinking of that first.

Basking in the peaceful bustle of the busy shopping street, Laurel turned her attention to the book list. She wondered if Phyllida Spore's surname meant she came from a family that traditionally dealt in magical plants and ingredients. All of the names were a little strange, thinking about it. Albus Dumbledore was very odd, and McGonagall was a normal-sounding surname, but she knew that "Minerva" was something out of a myth (Laurel couldn't remember exactly which but she thought it might be Roman or Greek) and while it wasn't something a Muggle would think was a _strange_ name, most people would probably consider it old-fashioned or "fancy-sounding," so she guessed it must not be common.

Thinking about it, her own name was interesting. Her first name, Laurel, sounded like something her Muggle relatives might have named her. It was a Muggle-enough-sounding name, being a plant, some kind of evergreen shrubbery. That fit with her aunt's name being a flower, and her surname being "Potter," which was common and fit nice with a plant name. But her middle name, Euphemia, was an old Greek name and clashed rather spectacularly with the common names bookending it, like the flip-turned opposite of a dingy-looking pub flanked by a pristine book shop and a trendy record store. Laurel rather thought that the only reason her Aunt Petunia had let her know she even had a middle name was because it happened to be the name of a Christian saint, so it probably never occurred to Petunia that it could have been the name of a witch.

Laurel, though, thought it just might be. Her mother was a witch born into a Muggle family, Laurel knew, and she'd died young. Aunt Petunia hadn't said anything about Laurel's father, but Laurel guessed he must be a wizard from a rich family of some kind. Where else might her mother and father have gotten enough money to leave their daughter an inheritance? It was simple logic.

Folding her letter thoughtfully, Laurel was just at the point of wondering why she'd been left with her mother's family then, where her grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins must be, when Professor McGonagall stirred beside her. The professor stepped away from the store window they'd been waiting by — unluckily, the record shop — and turned to face three newcomers who Laurel knew must be the Grangers: a perfectly ordinary-looking dad, a sublimely normal-looking mom, and a girl with the bushiest brown hair Laurel had ever seen.

"Professor McGonagall, it's good to see you again," said Mr. Granger, extending a hand which the professor shook. "Sorry for being a bit late. News said the traffic was bad — car accident — so we had to use the Underground."

"It's quite alright," Professor McGonagall said. "Miss Potter and I haven't been waiting long."

The man's eyes zipped to Laurel, who stood beside and slightly behind Professor McGonagall with her hands primly clasped in front of her. "Oh, hello. Miss Potter, is it?"

Mrs. Granger was smiling warmly, and the bushy-haired girl that must have been the prospective witch-to-be-trained took a step closer to get a look. Her eyes had been on Professor McGonagall; it seemed she had only just spotted Laurel. Looking from one to the next with a smile of her own, Laurel dipped into her third curtsy of the day and said, "Yes, Laurel Potter, sir. It looks like we'll be shopping for school things together."

Mrs. Granger's eyes hovered on Laurel's lightning-bolt scar for a few moments during the introduction, but it wasn't anything like the way people had gawked at it before she'd boarded the Knight Bus; it was more like the way people she knew from school looked at it when they noticed it for the first time. Mrs. Granger, smiling, put a hand on her daughter's shoulder.

"And this is our daughter, Hermione," she said. "I hope you'll be friends."

It was a common, if heartfelt, thing to hear when meeting the parents of other girls her age. But Laurel thought she saw something a little more hopeful than usual in Mrs. Granger's face when she said it, so Laurel looked at Hermione, who was smiling shyly with her lips firmly closed. "You just got your letter, then?" Laurel said. "I bet it was like a bucket of punch up the nose, huh? I've known about all this since I was seven, but I guess you didn't have the same warning."

Hermione blushed and blurted her first few words out in a bit of a rush, only slowing down after the first couple seconds: "Oh, yes, it was ever such a surprise... I'm really pleased, though! Were your parents magic, then, or—?"

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat and fixed Hermione with a chiding look, which prompted Hermione to blush and step closer to her mother. Laurel giggled and said, "We'd probably better all get inside before we say the 'M' word."

"Inside?" Mrs. Granger asked, looking puzzled. She looked to the record shop. "In there?"

Professor McGonagall shook her head. "Follow me, and keep close," she said, keeping her voice low as the Laurel and the Grangers fell into step around her. "Miss Potter and young Miss Granger can see it perfectly, but to Muggles, the Leaky Cauldron pub is enchanted to look like a closed-down shop."

Mr. and Mrs. Granger looked immediately at the pub in wonder at being told this, or what Laurel saw as a pub, and what she expected was a bunch of empty windows with a dusty open space visible behind it, perhaps with rows of empty, un-maintained shelves and an abandoned cashier counter to sell the illusion. Laurel, bemused by Professor McGonagall's explanation, followed the professor and the Grangers into the pub and wondered if this kind of magic was used for other magic places, too. Would the castle that wizards used as a school of magic be nothing more than a condemned old castle from medieval times to Muggles, just another remnant of that much-romanticized time of swords and kings and nobles in tight pants?

The inside of the pub looked just about as dark and shabby as it looked on the outside. Mr. and Mrs. Granger hovered inside the entrance looking doubtful, but Hermione took a few steps ahead and looked around, eyes bright with curiosity. After taking a moment to smile at this, Laurel stepped up next to her and did the same. For both of them, it was the first time they'd had a chance to get a good look at a room full of nothing but witches and wizards, and Laurel couldn't stop herself from wondering what they were like when they didn't have to worry about Muggles noticing them. The Knight Bus hadn't seemed like a good place to see that.

The buzzing chatter that filled the place was cozy enough. There seemed to be a motley mix of people dressed in normal clothes, people dressed in oddball assortments of mismatched garments, and people in robes. Laurel wondered at the people in robes: it was late July, and while it wasn't exactly sweltering, wearing cloaks and robes in this heat couldn't be comfortable. But then she realized there must be some kind of magic that kept their clothes cool, and focused on the people themselves.

The bartender was bald and toothless, and the patrons came in all shapes and sizes. There was a man sitting back in the corner booth nearby with a newspaper held open in front of him, his face mostly obscured. On the back page, which was the only part Laurel could see, there was a black-and-white photograph of a witch sitting sidesaddle on what looked like a very sleek, stylized broomstick. The caption below read, _Cleansweep Nine: The Official Broom of the Holyhead Harpies._ Laurel couldn't help noticing that the witch in the photograph (which, now that she noticed it, was moving) looked a bit uncomfortable posing as she was. Laurel supposed she must not have been totally on board with advertising a broomstick by posing like a saucy cowgirl.

"Oh my. What is _that_?" whispered Mrs. Granger in shock. Laurel looked to see, just in time for the squat, pointy-eared creature that was standing by the bar to turn its lumpy face in Mrs. Granger's direction to give her a creepy, pointy-toothed smile. Apparently, it had heard her. She squeaked and drew closer to her husband. Hermione stared back at the thing with a look of pleasant academic interest.

"That is a goblin," Professor McGonagall said crisply. "And as our first stop is Gringotts Wizarding Bank, you will be seeing quite a few more before the day is out. They run the bank, after all."

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Granger faintly. Mr. Granger, who seemed to have mentally prepared himself for the strange and unexpected, patted his wife's back comfortingly and laughed; she shot him a mock-angry look.

"Goblins," Laurel said thoughtfully. "Why do they run the wizards' bank instead of wizards?"

"An excellent question," Professor McGonagall said, beckoning them to follow. None of the witches or wizards around them looked up as they passed, though the goblin by the bar seemed to have noticed Laurel and was staring at her with a contemplative gleam in his eyes. "The bank was founded in the late fourteen-hundreds by a goblin. You'll learn more about how goblins play into our history at school, but the Ministry did take partial control of Gringotts for a time. However, it was given back into the complete control of the goblins over a hundred years ago."

"Oh, I just bet the complete history is fascinating," Hermione said brightly, looking at the goblin again.

"It sounds like a complicated garbage mess of bad blood and hard feelings," Laurel said wisely. Professor McGonagall, stopping by the back door of the pub, looked at them both appraisingly.

"Neither of you is wrong," Professor McGonagall said. "I do suggest doing a little independent reading if you're interested enough to learn more. I don't wish to speak ill of a colleague, but—" The professor broke off, looking slightly annoyed, and then turned to open the door. "Well, Professor Binns knows his subject very well. But his lectures are, to put it nicely, dry."

"He's the one who keeps getting students' names wrong," Laurel said rather than asked. Professor McGonagall, looking very slightly abashed, pretended not to hear her.

"Only witches and wizards can enter Diagon Alley," she said. "So, Miss Granger, you will not be able to ask your parents to do any of your shopping for you, I'm afraid. You may come here on your own, but will have to accompany them if they wish to go."

They stepped into a small walled courtyard, a desolate little space with weeds peeking through the cracked pavement and a lonely, dented tin trash can by the wall opposite. Professor McGonagall drew her wand out and casually waved it down her own body. Laurel watched, mouth agape, as the professor's unremarkable office dress shifted and warped, within seconds becoming a set of witch's robes like those she'd seen others wearing on the bus or in the pub. They were emerald green. Then, after extracting a clinking bag of coins from her handbag and stowing it in her robes, she waved her wand over the handbag and it became a pointed witch's hat, black, which she put on her head.

The Grangers, all three of them, stared in wonder at the phenomena. Laurel grinned.

"Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall?" she guessed.

Professor McGonagall nodded. "That is correct, Miss Potter," she said. Turning toward the brick wall in back of the courtyard, she held her wand up. "Now, pay attention and do not forget. Counting up from this trash can, begin at this brick here — you see that it is slightly discolored — and count, three up, then two across. Tap this brick with your wand, three times and no more."

Tap, tap, tap. Professor McGonagall stepped back. Hermione stepped eagerly forward. Laurel did, too, a little more cautiously. Then the brick McGonagall had tapped quivered, _wriggled_ as no brick ever could, and a hole opened. It widened, and widened, and became a high archway that opened onto a twisting cobbled street that cobbled away and twisted out of sight.

"Oh, wow," Laurel said casually. "I don't know what I was expecting, but..."

Hermione, bouncing on her heels in a way that told Laurel she was trying _not _to bounce and failing badly, turned back to her parents and said in a rush, "It's real. It's all real!"

Mr. Granger and Mrs. Granger were walking forward slowly. Laurel moved back a bit to let them take a closer look, thinking that perhaps they hadn't understood the magnitude of the magical world until right this moment, even after whatever demonstrations Professor McGonagall had given them when she'd delivered Hermione's letter. Laurel could relate. She'd had a similar experience not an hour before, when she'd first clapped eyes on and subsequently taken a very fast journey around the country on the Knight Bus.

It wasn't just that the wall had become an archway. Through the opening, they could already see the store fronts, the outdoor stands and stalls, the signage and the _people_. The Leaky Cauldron had been just a glimpse of what witches and wizards were like when they didn't need to hide. This, though, this was a full splash of rainbow crazy right in the face by comparison. Laurel could see stacks of cauldrons at one of the nearby shops, and beyond that on the other side, one of the stalls was stacked with what looked like amulets and pendants made with feathers and fangs and even one of what looked like a blue, webbed hand with three long fingers. When they passed it, she read the small sign affixed to the stall, which said the stall was selling hand-made jewelry and accessories. Laurel wondered who in the world would want to wear a webbed monster hand round their neck.

As Professor McGonagall led them down Diagon Alley, she began pointing out shops and telling them what they might need to visit them for in the future. Laurel hung onto every word, as surprisingly the professor was giving them advice unrelated to the required equipment list: "Madam Primpernelle's Beautifying Potions sells a lot of frivolous things, but there are a few products that no witch should go without, and that is the easiest place to find them," and "Scribbulus Writing Instruments, we'll be stopping there to buy your quills and parchment. But you might want to think of buying stationary for sending letters or perhaps some extra note-taking items. Miss Potter, you might invest some of your gold in an enchanted notebook, perhaps; it would be expensive, but a useful study aid," and "Sugarplum's Sweets Shop, which I'd recommend if you want to buy a gift for an occasion such as Valentine's Day or something congratulatory," and "Eeylops Owl Emporium is, of course, where you can purchase an owl. Useful for sending letters, but if you would prefer a cat or a toad, the Magical Menagerie carries pets of all kinds."

And on, and on, and on, until they came upon a snow-white building with pillars all round the outside and burnished bronze doors. A goblin in a scarlet-and-gold uniform was standing to the side of the entrance. Laurel knew before Professor McGonagall confirmed it that this must be —

"Gringotts," said Professor McGonagall, stopping and turning to the Grangers. "Our first stop will be the exchange desk. There, you can change your Muggle money for wizard gold. Before we go inside, I should explain how our currency works."

Interrupting, Laurel asked, "Can you change wizard gold for Muggle money, too?"

Professor McGonagall nodded. "You can. It's important that wizards be able to use Muggle services, but I should warn you that there is a larger fee for the exchange than there is for changing Muggle money to wizard gold."

That made sense, Laurel thought. They probably accepted a smaller profit for taking Muggle money because their only use for the Muggle money in the first place was providing the opposite exchange service.

The professor took her bag of coins out again and extracted three coins: one bronze, one silver, one gold, and held them up so that the Grangers and Laurel had a clear view.

"This is a common hurdle for Muggle families," Professor McGonagall began, "as our currency is not valued in a way conducive to quick mental calculations. Witches and wizards can do complicated counting by magic, so the denominations are all based on the relative value of the coins themselves."

Hermione leaned in. Laurel could tell she was eager to learn her second fact about wizarding society after the professor's short overview of Gringotts history.

"The most valuable is, of course, the golden Galleon," Professor McGonagall said. "There are seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon, and twenty-nine bronze Knuts to a Sickle."

Mr. Granger nodded his understanding. "I understand what you mean by it being a hurdle," he said. "Those are some complicated numbers."

Professor McGonagall smiled. "It's not as difficult as it sounds, once you get used to it," she said. "And in truth, since you'll be exchanging Muggle money for the most part, if you need to do so for larger expenditures, you'll likely bypass Sickles and Knuts entirely. That said, the exchange rate is always changing. The value of a Galleon is relatively stable. Its value _has _dropped over time, but inflation in the wizarding world does not occur as rapidly as in the Muggle economy. As of now, I would say that one Galleon is worth... I would guess, somewhere about five pounds, give or take. They will be able to tell you the exact current exchange rate inside."

Hermione, who had looked like she was doing some quick calculations in her head, said very fast, "So if a Galleon is around five pounds, a Sickle would be something like... thirty pence? Which would make a Knut a little more than one pence. I suppose the only one that's hard to keep straight would be the value of a Sickle, then."

Laurel blinked. Professor McGonagall gave Hermione a smile, nodded, and said, "At the moment, that's the case. It may be more difficult to keep track of in a year or two."

Mrs. Granger, looking thoughtful, said, "Alright, then. Let's go change our money. After that, we'll eat, and then get the shopping done."

When Mr. Granger agreed, the five of them set off for the bronze doors. The long-fingered goblin, who had a pointed beard, bowed them through. Once inside, Laurel's eyes were drawn to words in front of her so instinctively that she was halfway through reading them before she realized they were engraved on a set of silver interior doors:

_Enter, stranger, but take heed_  
_Of what awaits the sin of greed,_  
_For those who take, but do not earn,_  
_Must pay most dearly in their turn._  
_So if you seek beneath our floors_  
_A treasure that was never yours,_  
_Thief, you have been warned, beware  
_ _Of finding more than treasure there._

"Do wizards have many bank robberies?" Hermione asked, sounding alarmed. Laurel glanced sidelong at her, but her eyes were drawn back to the warning on the door.

"Just the opposite," Professor McGonagall said, not breaking stride. "No one has ever succeeded in robbing Gringotts. Goblins are very good at what they do."

Mr. Granger and Mrs. Granger were silent. Laurel couldn't blame them. This all must seem so alien to them, she thought. As they drew close to the doors and two more goblins bowed them through, Laurel's thoughts finally coalesced into something sensible, and she voiced them: "I suppose having a wizard's power means having the temptation to use it. So a warning like that's just common sense, right? 'You have power, but so does the bank. Don't be stupid, stupid. You aren't hard enough.'"

"Quite so," Professor McGonagall said.

It would be really easy for a witch or wizard to rob a Muggle bank, though, thought Laurel. And if Muggle money could be changed for wizard gold here... she shook her head. Surely someone else had thought of that before now. There was no point thinking about it.

Laurel walked easily with her hands clasped in front of her, a spring in her step as she took in the bank's interior and the many goblins sitting on high stools behind the long counter that dominated the vast hall, helping customers or working at paperwork for tasks they had been set. The Grangers might feel as if this place were alien, but now that Laurel had gotten over the novelty of seeing real-life goblins, she felt as if she were in her element. It might almost have been as if she had come to this bank a hundred times in the past to make deposits or withdrawals, as casually as going to grocer's for milk.

McGonagall led them to the nearest unoccupied goblin. This one had a long nose and a bristly travesty of a pencil mustache; he looked up at their approach, setting aside his quill and folding his long fingers together.

"Good afternoon," Professor McGonagall said. "I trust you are well, Earlaff?"

The goblin smiled, a much less swarthy look than the goblin in the pub had given them, but still one that revealed just how numerous and pointed his teeth were.

"Very well indeed, Minerva," the goblin said. His eyes flitted to the Grangers, who were hovering nervously at the rear. "Escorting another Muggle-born's family to exchange money, I take it? And also..."

Earlaff's eyes drifted to Laurel, and he trailed off.

"Ah," he said. "Miss Laurel Potter. Has it been ten years already...?"

Laurel curtsied for the fourth time, giving the goblin her best how-do-you-do smile. Earlaff stared at her, seeming lost in thought. As he did, a bearded man in Muggle clothes stepped up to the counter next to them, holding hands with a thirteen-year-old girl in black robes, and the corresponding goblin, who looked far grumpier than Earlaff, set to work assisting them.

Professor McGonagall said crisply, "Yes, we will be attending Miss Potter's vault as well. But I believe it would be best to see to Mr. Granger's exchange, first..."

So while the professor and the goblin teller walked Mr. and Mrs. Granger through the exchange process, with Hermione hovering to their side and standing on tip-toes to listen and watch, Laurel drifted back and let her eyes float over the bank. She found her gaze wandering back to the Muggle-dressed man and his teenage daughter. The man was handing a stack of notes to the goblin, evidently exchanging them for galleons. It looked like quite a large amount.

The man left with his daughter, still holding hands. Laurel watched them go, thinking it was a bit odd that the daughter seemed to be leading her father, but perhaps that was normal enough. He didn't look nervous about the goblins, though, and Laurel rather thought a man should be used to the bank and the Alley if they had a daughter attending Hogwarts for three or four years. The girl looked fourteen, Laurel guessed.

_None of my business,_ she thought, looking to see how the Grangers were doing. No sooner had she done so then Mr. Granger stepped back, smiling at her and waving her forward.

As she stepped up, Earlaff, stroking his overly-messy pencil mustache, eyed Laurel while saying, "Minerva, I trust you have Miss Potter's key?"

"I do," Professor McGonagall said, setting a small golden key on the counter. "Once we are done here, please leave it in Miss Potter's care."

The goblin leaned forward and looked at it closely. "That seems to be in order," he said, though he sounded as if it weren't in any doubt. Laurel tilted her head to the side.

"You can tell just by looking at it?" Laurel asked. "How do you know it's not the wrong key, or a fake...?"

Earlaff leaned back and turned his eyes back to her. He contemplated her for a moment, then said, "A goblin-made key such as this is easy for a Gringotts goblin to identify. And any one of us would spot a wizard-made imitation of a goblin-made object at a glance."

"That's really cool!" Laurel said, smiling. "Goblins must be way better at that stuff than wizards, if we're leaving all of our money and things with you instead of doing it ourselves."

The goblin teller's lips twitched, as if he wanted to smile. Then he looked up at Minerva. "I will have someone take you down to Miss Potter's vault. Nadrat!"

This next goblin was beardless, mustache-less, hairless, and had a very uniquely-shaped head: it was far bigger around the chin than around the forehead, a look made all the odder by the extremely thick glasses he wore. The glasses had a little mini-microscope attachment on a hinge over the right eye, which stuck out prominently over that side of his head.

"Follow me, please," said Nadrat. Professor McGonagall turned to the Grangers.

"Please wait here," she said. "Miss Potter and I will be back in a little while."

"Oh, but can't I please come see?" Hermione said quickly. "I want to see what a wizard's bank vault is like!"

Professor McGonagall looked to Mr. and Mrs. Granger, then to Laurel. "If Miss Potter doesn't mind showing you her vault, I have no objections."

Hermione spun around, bushy hair flying, and said, "Please, can I go? Can I go see?"

Mr. and Mrs. Granger, bemused out of their goblin-induced nerves, exchanged fond grins, and gave their daughter permission. So Nadrat led them toward one of the doors leading off the main hall, holding it open for the three of them. Behind it was a narrow stone passageway lit with torches, the sight of which caused a shiver of excitement in Laurel. The more time she spent in Diagon Alley, the more and more the Muggle world outside felt like a very boring dream, and the more real the magic felt.

There were rails on the floor. Nadrat whistled, and a cart came rattling up the sloping passage toward them, slowing to a stop right in front of them. Eagerly, Hermione clambered in. Bemusedly thinking that she should be the one most excited to see the vault since she would be the one spending the gold, Laurel climbed in after her, with Professor McGonagall bringing up the rear and Nadrat manning the front of the cart.

And then they were off.

It was a winding maze of caverns. Laurel didn't bother trying to memorize which turns they were taking when the passages started to branch off. The cart seemed to be steering itself, but when had Nadrat told it what its destination was, and how? He hadn't said anything. Between this and goblins being able to confirm that goblin-made things weren't fakes just by looking at them, Laurel was beginning to think that they must be a force to be reckoned with. She thought back to Professor McGonagall telling them that wizards had taken partial control of the bank at one time but had given it back to the goblins.

When they went to get their books, Laurel decided, she would definitely look for one about goblin history.

It was a thrilling ride, the closest to an amusement park that Laurel had ever been. She heard an awed gasp from Hermione's direction when they passed an underground lake; Laurel herself was struck almost breathless by the view. It looked like an illustration out of a book, made real.

Finally, the cart stopped next to a small door in the passage wall. It looked relatively simple, metal of course, but apparently it was the vault because when Nadrat disembarked, he withdrew the small golden key that Professor McGonagall had given him. Laurel, Hermione, and the professor got out of the cart and followed him to the door. He unlocked it, and the first thing that happened was a whole load of green smoke billowing out in a massive plume; Hermione squeaked and jumped back. Laurel watched the smoke dissolve in the air above the vault, wondering if it was some kind of security thing, like maybe it would poison anyone who opened the vault without the real key...?

She hoped it wouldn't kill them if it did. If someone made it as far as her vault somehow without the goblins wanting her to, she'd want to ask them how they did it so they couldn't do it again.

Glinting light drew her eyes, and her thoughts, away from the smoke and back to the vault. She felt as if her heart almost stopped.

It wasn't as if she was looking at a dragon's treasure pile or anything. The vault was, in fact, not an exceptionally big room. But even a room of this size could hold a lot of coins, and oh my did this vault hold a lot of coins. Professor McGonagall followed behind Laurel, unexpectedly silent, as if she were respecting a solemn occasion. Hermione stared in wonder, and turned wide eyes on Laurel.

"How in the world do you have so much money?" Hermione said faintly. "If a Galleon is worth five pounds... there... there must be thousands and thousands of pounds in there! Hundreds of thousands, maybe! I can't even see how far back this goes!"

On closer inspection, Laurel realized the vault was larger than it had first looked: it was narrow, but deep, extending far back into the rocks of the cavern from the door. Nadrat, who stood next to the door, turned to look and with two long fingers positioned the microscope over the right lens of his glasses.

"There is more than enough gold in Miss Laurel Potter's vault to see her comfortably through adulthood," Nadrat said. His voice was nasally and rough at the same time. "Please do not withdraw it all in one trip."

This last remark was accompanied by a sarcastic grin that revealed many gaps left behind by missing and broken teeth. Laurel laughed. As if she could withdraw even a tenth of this in one trip! She looked to Professor McGonagall and Nadrat, torn between two questions and not sure which of the two to ask.

"How _do_ I have so much money?" she asked first, looking at Hermione, who was still staring at Laurel in disbelief.

Nadrat shrugged. Professor McGonagall coughed into her fist.

"Your grandfather invented a rather effective hair care potion," she said. "A potion to manage even the most troublesome hair. I suspect he invented it partly to manage his own hair. Your father's side of the family always had poor luck with that."

Laurel goggled at Professor McGonagall. Could her long-ignored prayers have finally been answered by a family inheritance?

"As I recall, when he retired, he sold the company that produces Sleekeazy's Hair Potion," Professor McGonagall said, looking to the vault. "He must have made a tidy profit off of it."

Nadrat stroked his overbig chin with a large-fingered hand. "Ah. Yes, we did need to enlarge Mr. Fleamont Potter's vault some decades back," he said, sounding unconcerned. "Pity about the Dragon Pox. That man did bring in a lot of gold."

Fleamont Potter, Laurel echoed silently, stepping into her vault and stooping down next to one of the piles of Knuts. Her grandfather had invented a hair care potion, and turned it into a business, and then turned that business into a massive pile of gold for his son to inherit. "What's Dragon Pox?" she asked, momentarily diverted from the other more practical question she had to ask.

"Magical sickness," Nadrat said, bluntly. "Not often fatal, but sometimes. The Potters were old when they came down with it. Not surprised they didn't survive."

Professor McGonagall bowed her head, then raised it and stepped into the vault. She took a wand, and with a wave produced a heavy cloth bag out of nothing.

"For now it would be best," she said, "if you only withdraw enough for your school supplies, a pet perhaps, and a healthy amount of gold to exchange for Muggle money if you need it."

Laurel put a finger to her lips, nodding. Hermione stepped up to the edge of the vault behind them, hands behind her back, leaning in to look around but keeping a respectful distance from the gold, silver, and bronze. Laurel asked, "Are there any limits to how much I'm allowed to take or when I can take it?"

Nadrat stepped up next to Hermione and shook his bulbous head. "Not a one," he said. Then, smiling toothily: "Apart from the size of your bag and the strength of your arms. But for big expenditures, withdrawals can be arranged with a teller."

Professor McGonagall nodded. "Yes, and your tuition for the year has already been withdrawn. Arrangements for that were made when you formally accepted your place at the school."

Hermione hummed to herself. "As long as you spend responsibly, you can probably leave piles and piles of gold for your own children," she said, smiling. "Once you're out of school, I bet you can find a way to add to it and leave your vault even more stuffed with gold than you found it."

Laurel grinned back at Hermione. "That sounds like a good plan," she said. "I'm going to take a lot out this first time, though. I want to make a big start at a wizarding book collection! And I kind of think I want a cat, too."

*** * ***

Laurel and Hermione chattered happily about the sights and sounds of the Gringotts caverns on the cart ride back to the hall; apparently talk of responsible spending and investment constituted enough of an ice-breaker for Hermione to open up. When they rejoined the Grangers, who had been waiting near the silver doors, Hermione exploded into an excited recounting of what it had been like to ride a cart through the maze of tunnels and about the dazzling fortune in Laurel's vault and even the hair-care potion Laurel's grandfather had invented to amass most of that fortune. By the time they sat down at a table (complete with umbrella) outside one of the restaurants along Diagon Alley, the Grangers had forgotten their nervousness about the goblins and were themselves warming up to Laurel, who confessed to them her own unending hair-related woes, and expressed deep gratitude to her late grandfather for inventing a way she might deal with them.

The five of them ate a hearty lunch (Laurel ordered the steak and kidney pudding) and then they set off to get their shopping done. First they went to Flourish and Blotts, which was probably a mistake because neither Laurel nor Hermione could stay focused on just the eight books they needed for classes; Hermione left the store with no less than four books that weren't on the list, Laurel found several books on wizarding history and even a few promising-looking works of magical thriller fiction; she also managed to convince Professor McGonagall to let her buy _Curses and Counter-curses_ by Professor Vindictus Viridian, saying that she wanted to know what kinds of things she might have to look out for if she had any problems with bullies at school, and giving her solemn promise not to try using anything in the book on anyone at Hogwarts.

After that, they picked up cauldrons; Laurel held them all up by asking the shopkeeper what the difference between the different cauldrons was, distracting Hermione with an explanation about collapsible and self-stirring cauldrons (which was more like a sales pitch) and about how cauldrons were enchanted to be less heavy than they really were, and about how all the different metals didn't really matter, except that some were more difficult to melt than others.

They bought pewter cauldrons, with Laurel making a point to pick out two thick, heavy-duty cauldrons for the pair of them after that bit about cauldrons being melted during potion-brewing, and then they went to Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions to buy their uniforms. This was pretty much exactly like being fitted for clothes in the Muggle world, standing on footstools while a pair of witches pinned their robes to the correct lengths. The only difference was that Madam Malkin then magically changed the size of the robes to fit them perfectly.

"Off to an early start, aren't you?" Madam Malkin's had assistant remarked as she worked on pinning up Hermione's robes. "We don't usually see the Hogwarts crowd in for another few days, yet, except for a few eager first-years."

Hermione blushed and said that yes, she was quite eager, she had even bought an extra book on magical theory in case it helped with learning spells. Laurel stayed quiet. She was thinking about the teenage girl and her Muggle father changing money at Gringotts. She had been older than Laurel, and had already been wearing her school robes. There were a dozen reasons that could be, but it was still odd.

Professor McGonagall turned as they exited Madam Malkin's with their new school robes, neatly folded and wrapped, packed away with the rest of their shopping. "We still have a fair few things to buy," she said. "Potions ingredients, quills and ink... a wand. After all of that is taken care of, Miss Potter, I will see the Grangers back to Charing Cross Road and we can see about getting you a cat."

On the way to the Apothecary to buy their potion-making kits, Laurel insisted on stopping off Madam Primpernelle's Beautifying Potions — where she bought no less than twelve whole full-sized bottles of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment, to amused laughter from the Grangers and what might have been a twitch of amusement at the corner of Professor McGonagall's lips.

The Apothecary, once it was finished thoroughly creeping Mr. and Mrs. Granger out, yielded up the ingredients they needed for the year; Laurel and Hermione both agreed that it was only prudent to buy twice as many ingredients as they expected to use, for good measure. At Scribbulus Writing Instruments, they bought their quills, parchment, and some envelopes for letters. Laurel quickly found the enchanted notebooks that McGonagall had recommended and asked what was magic about them. According to the shopkeeper, by pointing one's want at the notebook and saying a word or phrase, the book would flip through its pages to every instance of that word or phrase in turn until the user commanded it to stop, and it also possessed enchantments that enabled it to re-organize the writing in a number of ways or change the color of the ink for individual letters or words, "all the better to organize your studies and solve complicated Arithmancy problems!" They were bound in handsome leather and could be locked, like a journal or diary, so that only with a password could they be opened. They were favored by students, and also by employees at the Ministry of Magic. Not many people could afford to buy replacements every time one got filled up, but (the shopkeeper had added) it was possible to erase all of the writing on a page using a simple charm.

Laurel bought two, for fifty Galleons each, and handed one to Hermione. Hermione, struck speechless, was unable to stammer out a thank-you until after her mother had said it for her.

Finally, all that remained to be done was to buy their wands.

"Of course, there is only one place for that," Professor McGonagall said briskly. "Garrick Ollivander is as accomplished a wandmaker as you'll find anywhere in the world."

Not that his shop looked the part. Like the Leaky Cauldron, it was narrow and dingy-looking. Peeling gold letters above the door read, _Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C._ The window was quite dusty, and the only display was a single wand resting on a faded purple cushion.

Laurel quickened her pace as they approached the store, ignoring its run-down appearance. She was the first into the shop, though she paused with one foot in the door when she heard a bell jingle at the door's opening... not over the door, but somewhere inside the shop. _Magic_, she reminded herself ruefully, and stepped inside, looking around.

It was quite as small on the inside as it was on the outside; if wizard-kind had developed TARDIS magic, Laurel mused, it had not graced this barren little building. The place was mostly empty, except for a single spindly chair, the shop counter, and countless narrow, wand-sized boxes neatly stacked from floor to ceiling along the walls and in rows behind the counter. Laurel heard the others enter, and the jingling bell rang a second time. Laurel, ignoring the chair, walked slowly to one of the stacks of boxes, setting her stuffed-but-magically-lightened backpack on the floor by the counter and turning to look at them. She had thought, just for a moment, she had seen something like a flash of light emit from one of the boxes in this stack at about the same moment the bell had run for the second time.

"There are so many of them," Hermione whispered. She had come up beside Laurel.

Laurel nodded, and then shivered. She felt a prickling on the back of her neck. Hermione glanced at her, surprised.

"You feel it too?" the bushy-haired girl asked. "I thought I was imagining that..."

"Good afternoon," said a soft voice, and Laurel (who had been about to answer Hermione) shut her mouth with a snap. Hermione had jumped. Laurel looked around, seeing Mrs. Granger sitting in the chair and the other two adults standing on either side; then her eyes landed on the old man who had emerged, like a ghost, from behind one of the rows of wand-boxes in the back. He had wide, pale eyes and wispy hair.

"Oh, h-hello!" Hermione squeaked, turning quickly to face the old man.

Laurel stepped closer to Hermione, thinking it might ease her nerves a bit. "Hello," she said, dipping into yet another curtsy. "Are you Mr. Garrick Ollivander?"

"That I am..." Ollivander said, still looking at Hermione. Then he turned to look at Laurel. Laurel half-expected a surprised reaction (she'd gotten a lot of those at the other shops) but Mr. Ollivander surprised her. "Ah, yes. Yes, yes," he said. "I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Laurel Potter."

Laurel smiled wanly. She wished she'd had a chance to talk to Professor McGonagall in private to learn what this was all about. It was getting quite annoying having so many people acting like they knew her for something amazing she'd done without knowing what that something was.

"You have your mother's eyes," Mr. Ollivander observed. "It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."

Mr. Ollivander was getting closer as he talked. She wondered if he just didn't know how creepy he was being, or if he was one of those people who knew it full well and did things like that for effect. Thankfully, he seemed to have at least a little sense for personal space. Or was that because she was a girl? It was probably because she was a girl.

"Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it — it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."

Oh, she'd had that thought too soon. Now he was _definitely _too close.

"And that's where..."

Mr. Ollivander touched the lightning scar. Professor McGonagall, in the corner of Laurel's vision, made a jerking motion as if she was going to spring forward and interrupt, but Mr. Ollivander spoke first.

"I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that did it," he said softly. "Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands... well, if I'd known what that wand was going out into the world to do..."

"Garrick," Professor McGonagall said tersely. "I hadn't yet had a chance to explain that to her..."

Mr. Ollivander, surprised, looked to Professor McGonagall. "Ah," he said. "My apologies."

"A wand did this?" Laurel said, brushing her finger over the lightning scar and taking a step back while Ollivander was too distracted to think it was rude of her to do so. "Was the car crash a cover story someone told my aunt and uncle, then?"

Mr. Ollivander and Professor McGonagall both looked at Laurel in surprise, although the latter was wearing a thin-lipped expression that told Laurel she had been surprised into anger. Mr. and Mrs. Granger were looking confused between Laurel and Professor McGonagall.

"They told you Lily and James died in a _car crash_?!" Professor McGonagall exploded a moment later, making Laurel, Hermione, and Hermione's parents all jump. "Of all the — why would they — I knew they must not have told you all of it, but — did they really not — _no_, it wasn't a cover story! It was in the letter! I saw Professor Dumbledore leave it for them!"

Laurel watched, blank with confusion, as Professor McGonagall tried to get her temper under control, stopping and starting in her effort to keep herself from yelling. Mrs. Granger stood up, looking from the professor to Laurel, then to Ollivander, her eyes wide with comprehension.

"Did someone attack Laurel? A... a witch or wizard? When she was too young to remember? They... that was how her mother and father died?" Mrs. Granger asked. "That's terrible! Who would do something like that?"

Professor McGonagall seemed to deflate. Hermione was looking at Laurel with her heart in her eyes, all sympathy and pity. Mr. Granger had stepped closer, his eye on the scar Laurel bore. Laurel, for her part, was flummoxed. She could get why someone might kill two full-grown adults, but why would anyone bother to attack a baby?

Mr. Ollivander stepped slowly into the midst of them all, moving back into Laurel's view, looking at her. He sounded as if answering Mrs. Granger's question, but it was to Laurel he spoke.

"Ten years ago," he said gravely, "there was a wizard. A dark wizard, a terrible wizard. He fashioned himself a Dark Lord, and gathered to him followers united in their pure-blood wizarding pride and their hatred and disgust for Muggles and Muggle-born witches and wizards. They called themselves Death Eaters, and he, casting aside the name given to him at birth, declared himself..."

Mr. Ollivander closed his eyes, took a breath as if afraid of what he was about to say, but his next words were quite steady.

"...Lord Voldemort."

He flinched after saying it, and so did Professor McGonagall. He paused for several seconds, then opened his eyes. He began to turn slowly around, looking to each of the others in turn, fixing them with his pale gaze and speaking in a whisper: "We do not speak his name. Those were dark times, times of fear and distrust. No one was safe, neither wizard nor Muggle, and it seemed only a matter of time before he brought even the Ministry of Magic to its knees in his service, to then move beyond and subjugate the non-magical world as well."

Laurel's finger had pressed lightly against her scar; she didn't notice when she had done it. Her parents had been killed by someone like that, someone who had been such a terror that he had nearly taken over the whole magical world? Mr. Ollivander had turned around completely now, and those pale eyes were on her again.

"Then, something happened that nobody could have foreseen," said the wandmaker. "Ten years ago, on Halloween night, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named traveled to Godric's Hollow. There, he sought out the last living Potters in their home, through treachery he defeated the enchantments that would have protected them, and he sought to kill them. No one knows why he set his sights on them. Perhaps it is because of their known pro-Muggle stance. Perhaps it is because James Potter had committed the heinous atrocity that was marrying a Muggle-born witch. Perhaps they had angered him in a more direct manner. Whatever the reasons..."

Mr. Ollivander shook his head, looking away. It was Professor McGonagall who filled in the next piece of the story.

"He killed Lily and James Potter in cold blood," the professor said quietly, looking at Ollivander. There was a shine to her eyes, in spite of her expression. But then she looked at Laurel and sympathy overruled everything else on her face. "He killed your parents... and then he tried to kill you."

Mrs. Granger moved next to Laurel, who mostly felt numb and a little bemused, and put an arm around her shoulder. Hermione had also moved so that she stood right next to Laurel on her other side. But both were still staring at Professor McGonagall. Mr. Granger, jaw tight and eyes hard with what could have been fear or anger, asked, "And where is this Lord Vol... 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,' now?"

Mr. Ollivander clasped his hand together in a gesture of vexation. He said, "We cannot say. Dead, or reduced; he was quite inhuman by that point, so who knows whether it was possible for him to truly be killed? All that is known is that when he attempted to curse infant Laurel Potter, something happened. The spell failed; the backlash reduced the Potters' house to a wreck, which stands as a memorial of the event to this day. And He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was gone, his ascent to lordship over our world thwarted. His followers were rounded up, or came out of enchantments — or _claimed_ to come out of enchantments, perhaps — and it was over. Thus began ten years of peace and recovery."

Laurel, blinking through the numb haze, said, "So that's why I'm famous."

Mr. Ollivander bowed his head respectfully. Professor McGonagall nodded sharply. "Yes," she said. "I had hoped to tell you all of this in a more private setting." She glanced at the Grangers. "I apologize. I should have expected that Garrick would say something about it."

Mr. Ollivander bowed again, this time with his whole upper body, and turned back toward the counter. "I apologize again," he said wearily. "I had expected that Miss Potter would know..."

Mr. and Mrs. Granger seemed to reanimate, quite abruptly. Hermione for her part remained where Laurel was, but the Grangers, with simultaneous looks of understanding to Laurel, stepped over to Professor McGonagall.

"I think we should know more about... this," Mr. Granger said tightly. "Mr. Ollivander said this was about Muggle-born witches?"

Professor McGonagall, her face determinedly even, looked at both of them and nodded sharply. "Mr. Ollivander," she said. "I will be taking Mr. and Mrs. Granger aside for a private conversation. Please see that Miss Potter and Miss Granger choose their proper wands."

Mr. Ollivander nodded his ascent and the professor left with Hermione's parents. Laurel turned to Hermione and offered a small smile.

"You can go first," Laurel said. "I'll wait."

"O-okay," Hermione said, biting her lip. "Laurel, are you—?"

Laurel raised both hands and held them up in a warding gesture. "I'm fine, I'm fine," Laurel said. "It's just, well, wow. I don't even know. It's a lot to take in." She dropped her hands, clasping them behind her back and smiling. "Now, go. Get yourself a wand."

Hermione smiled back. Mr. Ollivander pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket, and Laurel stepped away, sitting down on the spindly chair.

"Fortunately," Mr. Ollivander said, "I believe we may already have found a match for you, Miss Granger."

"Really?" Hermione said. "But you haven't even measured me yet."

"Well, to be sure of any match, we must do that. Which is your wand arm?"

"I'm right-handed, if that's what you mean."

"Hold out your arm, please, Miss Granger. That's it." The wandmaker began to measure Hermione, shoulder to finger, wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit, and even (amusingly) around her head; the tape-measure squeezed through the bushiness that was Hermione's hair and compressed it into rather an interesting shape.

As he worked, Mr. Ollivander spoke, with the air of a man who had a sales pitch thoroughly rehearsed and still loved every second of reciting it.

"Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance," he said. "We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another witch's wand."

Laurel had to keep herself from laughing midway through this explanation, as Mr. Ollivander let go of the tape measure, and it had continued to measure independently of him; right now, it was measuring between Hermione's nostrils. The look on her face was nearly as priceless, in its own way, as the look on Uncle Vernon's face when had delivered Laurel's acceptance letter to her.

Laurel realized a moment later that Mr. Ollivander had retrieved a back from the same place where Laurel had thought she'd seen a light shine out of one of them. She watched him carefully, wondering if what she thought she had seen then was what Mr. Ollivander meant when he claimed to believe he already had a match.

He turned back to Hermione with a single wand-box in his hands. "That will do," he said, and the tape measure flopped to the floor in an ungainly tangle. "Right then, Miss Granger. Unless I am much mistaken, this wand has already taken a liking to you. Ten and three-quarter inches. Vine and dragon heartstring. Somewhat rigid. Just take it and give it a wave."

Mr. Ollivander opened the box, withdrew the wand, and turned it around to hold it grip-first toward Hermione. Laurel couldn't help but think that it was quite the handsome-looking wand.

Hermione took the wand and, with a look of excited determination blazing in her eyes, swept the want in a wide semi-circle around her. Laurel sat up. A trail of blue and white sparks had trailed in the wake of the wand, almost as if it was celebrating its union with the witch it had (according to Mr. Ollivander) "chosen." Hermione beamed and turned back to Mr. Ollivander, clutching the wand in both hands and brimming with so much energetic triumph herself that Laurel half-expect _her_ to emit blue-and-white sparks next.

Mr. Ollivander took the wand back, placing it delicately back into its box and closing it. "A wand of vine... a most uncommon material. In my experience, vine-wood wands are more sensitive than most to witches or wizards that would prove a suitable match. This is only the second time, however, that I have witnessed a vine wand react to such a person the moment they entered my shop."

Hermione looked a little overwhelmed by this. Laurel stood up and walked over to her, poking her in the arm.

"Sounds like the wicked witch gets a wicked wand," Laurel teased. Hermione blushed, and retreated to the spindly chair, sitting down and folding her hands so she could watch Laurel be matched with a wand.

Mr. Ollivander went through the same motions of measuring Laurel from everything to everything else that he had gone through with his previous customer. Instead of heading straight for one specific box as he had with Hermione, he flitted directionlessly around the shelves, sliding out backs seemingly at random.

When he returned and had set his chosen prospects on the counter, the first wand he presented to Laurel was —

"Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. Give this one a wave."

But Laurel had barely even _moved _the darned thing before it was rudely snatched back out of her hand by Mr. Ollivander and he was presenting to her another wand.

"Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try this one."

Laurel stared at him blankly without taking the wand immediately, then figured it must be like how the goblin Earlaff had been able to tell her vault key was both authentic and the correct key for her specific vault just by looking at it. She took the wand, lifted it, and huffed irritably when it was also, immediately, snatched out of her hand.

This process went on for quite a while. "No, no — here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, try it out."

Paying attention to the way Mr. Ollivander was selecting the wands she was to try, she noticed he seemed to be playing a bit of a hot-and-cold game; every couple of wands, he would pick a wand that was substantially longer, or shorter, and then he would stay around the same general length for a couple attempts, and then change it up. So there did seem to be some kind of method to the madness. Laurel just didn't know enough about wands to understand what the method was, she supposed.

Hermione was leaning forward, wearing a puzzled frown. Laurel could guess at the thoughts she was thinking: if wands were so temperamental about who could use which one, why had it been so easy for her want to "choose" her?

Mr. Ollivander, on the other hand, seemed to be having the time of his life.

"Tricky customer, eh?" he said with good humor after Wand Number Laurel-Has-Lost-Count-Plus-Five. "Not to worry, we'll find the perfect match here somewhere — I wonder now — yes, why not — unusual combination — holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple."

But that one didn't work very well, either. In fact, he almost seemed to snatch that one out of her hand faster than the others, if that were possible. And so the pile mounted higher.

After trying all of the wands that he had taken down in his first pass around the shop, Mr. Ollivander stood there holding the latest wand he had attempted (applewood and unicorn hair, thirteen and three-quarter inches), turning it over in his hand and appearing to be lost in thought.

"It is unusual, for a witch or wizard to bond so poorly with so many different wands," he said, quiet and bemused. "If that is the case, then perhaps... yes, perhaps, a picky wand for a picky customer. That might show us some results."

He re-boxed the apple wand, set it on the pile of tried wands, and retreated into the shop. He returned a moment later with another box, from which he withdrew from it a long, narrow, and quite elegant-looking wand. Laurel leaned in for a closer look; she felt almost immediately drawn to it.

He stood observing this reaction for a moment, and held the wand out toward her, grip-first as always.

"Let's see how you fit this wand," Mr. Ollivander said. "Fourteen and a quarter inches. Acacia and unicorn tail hair. Flexible."

She took the wand, and felt a strange, comfortable chill in her finger. It wasn't unpleasant; it was like a cool autumn breeze. Laurel didn't wave the wand right away. She stepped a pace and a half away from Mr. Ollivander and held up the wand, running a finger along its length. Somehow, she felt she didn't need Mr. Ollivander's pronouncement to be sure of it: this wand was hers, and hers alone.

The thought, the certainty, inspired a giddy sense of peace and satisfaction. She did not know what made her do it; she lifted her wand above her head, smiled, and half-closed her eyes. Then, with a grace she didn't know she was capable of, she _twirled_, not just the wand but her body, a joyous pirouette. Her line of sight spun, and was swiftly obscured by the spiraling shower of green-and-purple sparks that flowed from her wand and fell all round her.

Through the sparks as she spun, she saw Hermione jump up and cheer and clap, and when she came to a stop Mr. Ollivander cried, "Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh very good. I had begun to wonder if that wand would ever meet its match..."

The shower of sparks descended slowly, and took a few moments more to subside and fade away. When the light had faded and the gloom of the old shop had re-established itself, Laurel took the acacia wand in both hands and kissed it.

"I love it," she said. "It feels perfect. Like it belongs to me already, and I haven't even bought it yet!"

Mr. Ollivander picked up the acacia wand's box and took the wand, putting it back into its package. "Yes, indeed. Wands of acacia are difficult to match, and very loyal to their owners once chosen. Their tendency, in fact, is to work at all for anyone other than their owner. Then there is the unicorn hair: not as powerful, perhaps, as the tail-feather of the phoenix or the dragon's heartstring. But very reliable, and very _loyal_ to the wand's true owner. You will find, Miss Potter, that this wand will never betray you. Be warned, however: neither the wood nor the core is well-suited to magic that is exceptionally... loud or smelly, so to say. But I think you will find that subtler magics come easier to you with this wand."

As he spoke, Mr. Ollivander was wrapping the two boxes.

"To think, I would sell those two wands to customers who walked through that door at the same time," Mr. Ollivander mused to himself, sounding intrigued. "Acacia and vine. I think we can expect great things from you... from _both _of you, Miss Potter, Miss Granger..."

*** * ***

They had to wait a little while after that, even after Laurel's prolonged wand-matching process, before Professor McGonagall returned with Hermione's parents. They paid for their wands, seven gold Galleons each. Laurel immediately took her wand out of its box and admired it as she walked. Hermione's parents seemed to have come to terms with whatever it was about the story of Lord Voldemort and his followers that had unsettled them, and they were now listening to their daughter recount their two wand selections. Now they were on their way back down Diagon Alley toward the Leaky Cauldron, where Professor McGonagall would see the Grangers off.

They passed a shop that caught Laurel's eye, and she stopped, staring through the window of a second-hand book shop. She still had a fair amount of wizarding money (even after changing much of it to pounds and pence before they had left the bank), and she wanted to perhaps get one more book. She had been all over Flourish and Blotts already so she wanted to look around in this other book shop before she left.

The others had noticed that she'd stopped and turned to see what had caught her attention. Laurel grinned bashfully and said, "Sorry, can I look around in there while you all go back to Charing Cross Road? Sorry, I just... can't resist books!"

She laughed nervously, but Mrs. Granger smiled warmly and said, "We understand... our Hermione is the same way!"

Hermione went a bit pink. Professor McGonagall breathed out a short huff through her nose. "Very well," she said. "I will be back soon. Please do not wander off."

But before Professor McGonagall could turn to lead the Grangers away, Laurel jumped. "Oh!" she said. "I almost forgot! I was thinking... of asking..."

Professor McGonagall waited, and the Grangers watched patiently while Laurel tried to collect herself and ask what she had thought to ask somewhere around the point where they were buying potions ingredients.

"I was wondering if I could visit over the summer?" Laurel asked after a few seconds, clasping her hands in front of her in a praying motion. "And maybe stay the night the day before September First, so I can go with you to King's Cross? It's just, my aunt and uncle don't like magic much — er, it's their religion I think — so, um, it would be easier on all of us if I got to King's Cross without making them drive me."

Mr. and Mrs. Granger looked at each other. Hermione looked both surprised and happy. Before her parents had even had a chance to think about it, she whipped around, just as she had in the bank, and said, "Can she? Can she, please? We can study our course books together! Please, Dad? Mum?"

Laurel had to wonder just why it was that studying their course books was the first fun activity Hermione could think of under the circumstances, but she couldn't say she disagreed with the idea. She planned to spend a lot of time this summer reading her school books, learning what she could about magic and the magical world, and it might just be more fun if she had someone to share it with.

"Of course she can," Mrs. Granger said, after another shared look with Mr. Granger in which she (Laurel supposed) was somehow able to tell whether he agreed or not. Rummaging in her handbag, she dug out a small notepad and pen, jotted down her address, and handed Laurel the page she'd written it on. With an excited good-bye from Hermione, the Grangers set off for the Leaky Cauldron with Professor McGonagall, leaving Laurel to explore the shop to her heart's content.

She entered the store, eyes bright with intrigue. The shopkeeper's customary double-take at the sight of her scar did not prevent her from quickly finding and buying a copy of _Advanced Potion-Making _by Libatius Borage, which she hoped she'd be able to get to by the end of the summer. According to the shopkeeper, it was a book used by sixth- and seventh-years at Hogwarts; but he hadn't questioned why she was buying it, star-struck as he was in the presence of the baby who had vanquished Lord Voldemort.

She was just slipping this latest find into her backpack and moving toward the door when she saw, through the window, the same Muggle-and-daughter pair that she had seen in the bank. They seemed to be in quite a hurry to get somewhere now... and the teenage daughter was definitely the one pulling her father along this time. He was trailing behind by a whole two paces, looked like.

Laurel felt a tightness in her chest that told her something was wrong. And even though Professor McGonagall had told her not to wander off, she felt like she needed to get a closer look, just to be sure. So she put her backpack back on, clutched the acacia wand in her left hand — she'd forgotten to put it away — and hurried out the door, catching sight of the Muggle-and-daughter duo as they rounded one of Diagon Alley's many bends.

Not wanting to lose them, she hurried to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> This was a fun chapter to write. I wanted to mess around with canon information, so I decided to introduce Fleamont Potter's wonderful hair potion, and play around a little with the information Pottermore divulged about the various wand woods and their traits. I also wanted to establish some hard butterfly-effect triggers here: Laurel did not fit with the holly-and-phoenix-feather wand, instead being chosen by a wand of acacia with a unicorn-hair core, so the twin core connection won't come into play with Voldemort... a fact that affects more than just Book Four; she also managed to buy an advanced potions textbook out of Professor McGonagall's sight, so she won't be finding the Half-Blood Prince's annotated copy later on. But it isn't enough that changing the date of Laurel's trip to Diagon Alley prevented things from happening; the flip side of the butterfly effect is that things that didn't happen before do happen in exchange for all the things that didn't. So the seeds have been planted for a Mr. and Mrs. Granger (for whom I haven't thought of given names yet) knowing far more about the dangers of the magical world than Hermione seems to have allowed them to see in canon, and Laurel is about to get mixed up in something that might or might not have been going on in a different place on a different day in Harry's timeline, but doesn't appear in the books either way because he never encountered it.
> 
> It didn't seem right for the pre-Hogwarts section to not have some sort of adventure to precede the Hogwarts school year with, and so I've imagined up my own. Expect the story to continue to do things like this: circumstances and plot threads from canon, but character actions leading to entirely different situations and outcomes.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the two new goblin faces I created for this chapter, and I also hope you don't begrudge me not using Director Ragnok and the almighty Goblin Nation that the Harry Potter fanfiction section can't seem to get enough of. I'm not super fond of it. As you can probably guess.
> 
> — Lewis Medeiros,  
November 20th, 2019 at 2:39 AM


	4. Chapter Four: Ophelia Greengrass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After making the ill-advised decision to follow a suspicious-looking Muggle man and his unusually domineering teen daughter to see if there was actually anything funny going on with them, Laurel ends up in Knockturn Alley, where she throws a wrench in the best-laid plans of a sneaky Dark wizard and makes her first true mark upon the wizarding world.

**\- Chapter Three -  
"Ophelia Greengrass"**

* * *

**T**he girl and her alleged father almost managed to slip completely out of view. Laurel was just about to give up and go back to the second-hand bookshop when, as she passed the Obscurus Books publishing house, she caught sight of the pair again. The girl was tugging stubbornly at her father's hand; he had stopped and was standing there in what looked, from the back, like something that might have been a daze.

The teenage daughter in school-robes looked cross. Laurel, with her hand raised so that she looked as if she were wiping sweat from her brow (and covering her scar in the process, to prevent passersby from recognizing her and drawing attention) drew near enough to hear a few faint words.

"Come on, daddy...! This way, I want to go this way!" she was saying.

To Laurel's ears, the childishness in the girl's voice sounded a bit false. It reminded her a little bit of the way her cousin Dudley behaved when he was trying to get Aunt Petunia to do something for him or take him somewhere. But her father was neither the cartoonish pushover that Aunt Petunia was nor in any mood to chide his daughter for being spoiled. Indeed, he didn't seem to be in the mood to respond to his daughter at all. He was simply standing there.

The girl cast a careful look around; before the girl could spot her (luckily, she looked the other way first), Laurel turned her eyes upward, continuing to wipe imaginary sweat from her forehead and squinting at the sky as if the heat irritated her. She didn't look down again until she heard the girl saying, "Come _on_, Daddy!" again. When she did, the pair were moving, and no longer in any danger of being spotted, Laurel broke into a light jog to close some distance. She moved her hand so that she looked like she was scratching her forehead now, trusting that no one would watch her long enough to notice how unnaturally long she was doing it for.

Another bend, and then another, and then Laurel paused, continuing to scratch her forehead, frowning at the old street sign that stood at the corner her quarry had just disappeared round. The shop she could just barely see closest to her down the narrow, dingy alley (selling what the dusty window advertised as foreign-import poisons and cursed dolls) gave her pause, as did the words on the sign: _Knockturn Alley_. Another child might not have thought much of it, but Laurel was very bookish and had an eye for wordplay, and as with Diagon Alley and "diagonally," her mind immediately jumped to the obvious bad pun: "nocturnally." This made her think of darkness, and she knew very well there was dark magic in the world after the story that Mr. Ollivander had told her about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his followers...

Knowing instinctively that if she looked back someone would probably notice her looking suspicious, she resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and be sure no one was watching. She turned and walked, as if it were normal, into the alley. Laurel was quite sure that any place as narrow and dark as this, with a poison-and-voodoo-doll shop at its mouth, would not be a street that adults wanted children wandering down.

Professor McGonagall's order not to go wandering off played back in her head and she considered turning back. Every shop she passed along the dark alley strengthened this instinct. But she caught sight of her mark again just as good sense was about to reinstate itself; again, the girl was dragging her Muggle "father" into an even narrower alleyway between shops.

Swallowing a dry lump and trying not to look too nervous or interested in all of the obvious dark magic shops to her left and right, she carried on. She passed a cage full of black spiders and shuddered — they were a lot bigger than the spiders from her cupboard. She tried to look assured and normal, so that none of the adults, who were all creepy-looking, would think she didn't know where she was or what she was doing. Even if adults didn't think children should be somewhere, Laurel had learned a long time ago, they usually wouldn't involve themselves with someone else's kid if they looked like they thought they had a right to be somewhere. Usually.

She stopped outside the alley, leaning forward just a bit to peek inside. It turned out of sight not far in, a blind corner. Laurel slipped in, and properly out of sight of the few shabby-looking wizards on the street, she quietly dashed to that corner and stopped as she heard the girl's voice again.

"—can't believe a Squib like you could resist it," the girl was saying. She sounded at once nastier and more like a grown man now. She had, in fact, gone from sounding like Dudley to sounding like Uncle Vernon. "Do I have to hurt her to get you to cooperate, then, you piece of filth? I've been very gracious to you and your family. Why, I've even let them go about their normal lives. But I will do worse if I don't get my way..."

There was a mumble, a voice that Laurel thought must be the "father," from which she caught only the words "no" and "away from." She guessed he must have told the girl-who-sounded-like-Uncle-Vernon to stay away from his family. The girl laughed softly. Clutching her acacia wand, Laurel drew a little closer, trying to peek around the corner.

The man was facing her, but he was shaking his head, and his... everything else was shaking, too. He stood rigid and straight, as if he was physically unable to relax. The girl, her back to Laurel and mere meters away, had taken out a rough-looking wand and was fingering it in a sinister way.

She was laughing at the man now.

"Oh, relax," the girl said waspishly. "I wouldn't touch your filthy Muggle daughter, Squib. And your wife is so... homely. Those eyebrows. Really, man, what _were_ you thinking?"

She lifted the wand, pointing it at the man.

"But I may have to inflict a little pain on them to make you see reason, if you insist on continuing to fight me," the girl said silkily. "Or maybe you're so drowned in your own Muggle muck that you would find that arousing? I _did_ find your wife's collection intriguing despite myself, I have to admit—"

The man's eyes were drawn, as eyes must be drawn, to Laurel. They were too glazed to betray any reaction, but the girl must have seen anyway. She whirled around sharply, wild-eyed with alarm. Before either of them had time to meet each others' eyes, before Laurel could withdraw behind the wall, the girl directed the rough wand at Laurel and hissed: "_Imperio_!"

And quite suddenly Laurel felt no worry at all. She was as happy as she had ever been, her mind blank and blissful, vaguely pleased. It was an unfamiliar feeling... Laurel, motionless, wondered in a kind of directionless way what the feeling even was, whether she had ever been so happy about anything before...

_Step out into the open,_ the girl's voice said, and Laurel did so, because it seemed dangerous to disobey now. _Give me your wand,_ it said a moment later, and she did that too, because she knew it was no good to either of them.

At some point, Laurel must have dropped the hand she'd been absently covering her scar with, because through the haze of bliss she heard the girl swear and saw her back away.

"You? It can't be!" the girl half-growled, half-whispered. "The bleedin' Girl Who Lived? What are you even doing here? Who's your minder? Weren't you sent off to be raised by Muggles?"

The girl looked wildly at her father; Laurel stood unconcerned, not thinking at all about how odd the situation was, no, she thought with a detached kind of sardonic amusement; it wasn't odd at all, so she shouldn't think it was, should she? She should be stupid and ignore it, like everyone else on the street and in the bank today... she watched with amusement as the girl switched her own wand to her left hand and held up the acacia wand, gritting her teeth and glaring at it as if it had insulted her ancestors.

The girl's father was shaking his head, as if coming out of a daze. Laurel looked at him. Following her eyes, the girl scowled and directed the acacia wand at the man. "_Imperio,_" she said, sounding bored, and then proceeded to ignore him. She then turned to Laurel, frowning thoughtfully.

"Who's your minder, Potter?" the girl said.

"Professor Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Laurel answered dutifully, because it wouldn't change anything if the girl knew who her minder was, probably. The girl, who Laurel suddenly knew couldn't be a girl, flinched back.

"Of course it would be someone from Hogwarts, like with me," the girl said through her teeth. "Where is she now?"

"She left me on my own for the day," Laurel lied. "I guess she went back to her home or the school or wherever she spends her summers."

It came so naturally that she didn't even realize the haze had faded to something insubstantial, that the sardonic amusement with the situation had overridden it, that her happiness had been overridden by the almost identical sense of gleeful disdain for this girl-who-sounded-like-a-man who had been spotted for a crook by an eleven-year-old school girl. It was the same feeling she felt whenever Uncle Vernon walked into the room.

The girl-who-sounded-like-a-man relaxed, laughed, and twirled the acacia wand around in her fingers, pocketing her own rough-looking wand.

"Well, that's just perfect..." the girl said. Her father had finished shaking his head and was now stiff, a different kind of stiffness, looking less and less glazey-eyed by the minute. His eyes darted to Laurel, then to the impostor's back. The impostor had taken a vial of some liquid, silvery-gold in color, out of her pocket. She tried to flip open the hinged top lid with her thumb, but missed, and brought the still-sealed potion to her lips. Realizing it hadn't opened, she gave it an acidic look; as if it were to blame for her poor dexterity! Laurel smiled faintly.

"Is that the potion you used to look like a girl, sir?" Laurel guessed. "That's a bit icky. I mean, you grew a _chest _and all! A big one."

A giggle bubbled up in her chest from the haze that the "Imperio" spell had cast over her; she put a hand to her lips. The girl-who-sounded-like-a-man looked alarmed. She pointed the acacia wand at Laurel and said, "_Imperio_!"

Feeling an odd, hazy-minded desire to mock the impostor by playing along, Laurel let her hand drop from her mouth and adopted a distracted, glazed look. She smiled vapidly, like Aunt Petunia discussing gossip on the phone. The man behind the impostor tensed.

The girl took an involuntary step back, holding the acacia wand on Laurel and drawing closer to the man who was definitely not her father. The impostor was panicking now, whispering his thoughts allowed. "Just wipe her memory and leave," she was saying to herself. "Or... no... I used her wand, I can wipe both their memories and pin this on her—"

They both moved one after the other, first the man who had been called Squib, then Laurel. It all happened very fast: the man got both of her arms from behind, she let out a strangled shriek that at once high-pitched and girlish and an angry roar, and then Laurel's fingers were in her eyes. The man was yelling, "HELP! HELP! IMPERIUS CURSE, IT'S THE IMPERIOUS CURSE! HELP! HELP!" and the girl had been wrestled to the ground so violently that her head cracked against the wall. Her struggles, which were quite feeble for the small-framed teenage body that didn't belong to her, were made all the feebler for the knock to the head. The acacia wand went rolling away, and the silver-gold potion clinked to the ground near Laurel's knee. She bumped it away by accident, sending it rolling off around the corner she'd come from.

The haze of happiness and the accompanying sardonic glee had vanished the moment Laurel had decided to finally act. Now, a new haze had descended over her: shame, anger, humiliation. She clawed at the girl's face with her fingers, the girl who was not a girl turned her head wildly left and right, red eyes streaked with tears and a bit of blood, trying to escape, but pinned by the man. Laurel kept trying to get at her eyes. How dare she, _how dare she_, trying to turn her into a hand-puppet like she'd turned her not-father! She...

...but Laurel started to realize that she wasn't a she. The girl's auburn hair, which she shared with her father, was rapidly shortening and turning the color of straw. His limbs were thickening, the soft cushion of her overbig chest pinned beneath Laurel was shrinking in on itself, replaced by flat bony nothing. He was growing, inches and inches. The robes or something underneath them was ripping, Laurel could feel it under her left arm, which had grabbed the man round his back.

He was thirty or forty, Laurel couldn't tell which, and his was blinking and trying to fight the dizziness of what was probably a concussion. Screaming her fury, Laurel stopped trying to claw his eyes and started pulling his hair.

"How dare you! _How dare you_!" she shrieked. "You crook! You burglar! You _idiot_! HOW DARE YOU!"

There was a shuffle behind her. She ignored it... until with a BANG she was flung back, the man was flung back, and a woman's voice shouted "_Petrificus Totalus!_"

Laurel tumbled to a stop with the potion vial lodged painfully under her ribs. Pushing herself up on her hands, the looked up to see a tall, blonde woman with sky-blue eyes staring down at her, a wand in her hand. For a moment it was pointed at her, but then the blonde's look of wariness was replaced by surprise. She stepped back, eyes darting to Laurel's forehead.

Then, immediately, she turned toward the man, who had managed to keep his feet apparently. The reddish-brown hair his daughter had inherited from him, his jeans and flannel shirt were all ruffled, but he held his hands up in surrender, looking relieved.

"Thank God help came..." he huffed and puffed. As if the words had caused it to click in her brain, Laurel noticed a small wooden cross dangling from his neck that hadn't been there before. Apparently he'd been wearing it under his shirt and it had gotten dislodged during the struggle.

Laurel grunted, and pushed herself up. As she wobbled to her feet, she pointed at the man, the crook, the burglar, the _idiot_, and said, "This man cast Imperio on me! On _me_!"

The blonde woman, who so far hadn't spoken (her lips had been determinedly tight and her expression schooled neutral), looked horrified.

"I thought someone might just be making a racket," the woman said. She pointed her wand at the crook himself, who Laurel now noticed was utterly unmoving as if made of stone, his rolling eyes the only thing alive-looking about him. Laurel snatched the vial from the ground and held it out.

"He was a girl! And now he's a man!" she said. "He dropped this."

The blonde woman took the potion with her free hand, looking at it critically. The man who had been called a Squib, whatever that was, stepped forward slowly. His freckled face was dripping with sweat, and he was shaking again, just a little.

"He had me and my family under the Imperius Curse... disguised himself as my daughter," he said quickly. "I'm a Squib — a stockbroker — don't know how he found out about me — he tried using it on this young girl too. She broke it."

The man looked at Laurel in awe. Inexplicably, because she didn't know what it was exactly that she had broken, Laurel swelled with pride and sniffed, "Of course I broke it!"

The blonde woman was staring at Laurel now, too. Then there was a _crack_ outside the alleyway, then another _crack_. The woman glanced back over her shoulder, and lowered her wand. "That'll be the Aurors," she said. "Keep calm and tell your story. Once they examine the wands, they'll know the truth." Then, to the petrified man on the alley floor, "You're going to Azkaban for a very long time, I'm afraid..."

The petrified crook's rolling eyes rolled all the more rapidly. Laurel turned toward him, smirked and blew him a goodbye kiss. She didn't know what Azkaban was, but it sounded a little like Alcatraz, which she'd read about in a book once. So she guessed it must be a prison for bad wizards, given the context. She had no idea what an Aurora was, though, or whatever word it had been.

Amused by Laurel's flippancy, the woman smiled. Then two men burst onto the scene from the mouth of the alley, dashing toward them. The woman stepped back, dropping her wand and holding her hands up. Laurel looked at them. One of them, the most eye-catching, wore scarlet robes and had his hair tied in a ponytail. The other, tough-looking with short gray hair, brought up the rear. Both had wands out. Laurel smiled at them clasping her hands in front of her and stepping back into the far corner of the alley. By now several witches and wizards had gathered around the mouth of alley, bunching up together or craning over each others' shoulders for a look.

"My word..." said the gray-haired wizard, stopping abruptly and staring at Laurel. "It couldn't be you...? What on Earth are you doing in—?"

The blonde woman stepped over more clearly into view, interrupting sharply, "Auror Dawlish, if you please, the perpetrator of this incident is incapacitated around this corner."

The second wizard had slowed for a moment, staring at Laurel, but he and Dawlish both sprang back into action as if they hadn't stopped. They stepped around the corner, surveying the scene with their wands pointed upward on their right and left sides respectively. They stood there for a few seconds, and then the ponytailed wizard turned to the woman.

"Miss Greengrass, from across the road, correct?" he said. "The tavern?"

"That's right," said the woman, smiling faintly. "Ophelia Greengrass. I heard this man calling for help... screaming about the Imperius Curse, and came as quickly as I could."

Ponytail nodded, and stepped over, bending to pick up the acacia wand. Laurel quickly took a few steps toward him, saying, "That's mine!"

The Aurors looked quickly over at her, then back down at the wand. Dawlish bent down next to the petrified crook as the Squib began to say, "He was disguised as my oldest, my daughter... it was, er, some kind of potion, he put her hair in it. There's — there's a vial, Miss Greengrass has it. He also used the Imperius on Laurel Potter, and made her give up her wand."

Laurel brushed a wild lock of hair out of her eyes. Some of it had come loose. She was sore all over. She realized she'd done all of that struggling with a heavy backpack full of books and things on.

"He tried to use it to do that Imperius thing again, but it didn't work," Laurel said. Then, proudly: "Mr. Ollivander said it wouldn't do magic for anyone but me! _Oopsie_-daisy..."

Her eyes glinted to the petrified man, and she stuck out her tongue. Of course, he couldn't do anything but stare back. The two Aurors (Dawlish had extracted the rough-looking wand from the crook's pocket. "He used this wand to do the deed?" Dawlish asked, looking up at the Squib.

The Squib nodded shakily. "He cast the Imperius a few times again just this morning, as well. I was starting to resist... so was Mafalda, my youngest." There was something dead in his eyes, which punctured the swelling balloon of self-satisfaction in Laurel's chest, when he added: "He first put us under a few weeks ago."

The Aurors looked at each other, grim satisfaction on Dawlish's face, nothing but grimness on the others. "We'll need to take your statements..." said Ponytail. He glanced back at the gathering crowd by the alley's mouth. "Somewhere private, if I could trouble you for your hospitality, Miss Greengrass."

Ophelia Greengrass straightened, holding her head high and slipping her wand up her sleeve. For the first time, Laurel took the time to look her over. Her hair was straight and sleek, and she was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman Laurel had ever seen. Her aqua-colored robes, which were almost more of a dress, shimmered and hugged her figure tightly. She looked very much like how Laurel always pictured herself when she imagined herself as an adult, except that the hair and eye colors were wrong and she naturally had quite a different sort of face. Yet even as Laurel thought this, she realized her impression of her as a _woman_ wasn't quite right. Her height had fooled Laurel at first, but at a closer look Laurel wondered if she was just young enough to still be in high school.

"Certainly," said Ophelia. "My aunt has taken my cousin to St. Mungos, to visit her father. But I'm certain Aunt Griselda would offer her full cooperation, were she here."

The woman turned on her heel and Laurel was momentarily transfixed by the way her golden hair caught even what little light was filtering down into the alley from above.

"If you could escort us through the crowd, Mr. Williamson?" Ophelia said, "I can take you up to the apartment. I think we might have people goggling at Miss Potter through the windows if we kept to the tavern floor."

"Quite right, quite right," Dawlish said, nodding and standing up. "I'll have reinforcements here in two shakes to bring in our perpetrator. Williamson, take Miss Potter, Miss Greengrass, and... pardon, I haven't got your name, sir?"

The Squib awkwardly inclined his head. "Prewett, Mr. Dawlish. Roger Prewett."

"...Mr. Prewett," agreed Dawlish. "Take these three across the road to the Welsh Green and wait with them. Oh, and Miss Potter, who is your minder?"

Dawlish looked a bit stern as he asked this. Laurel heard the unasked question: what what she doing here without one?

"I'm sorry," Laurel said in her humblest voice. "Professor McGonagall left me at a second-hand shop some time ago, but I saw Mr. Prewett and... him, and thought they were acting strange. I know I shouldn't have followed, I'm sorry, but they looked so strange! Professor McGonagall's probably back by now, and worried. Can you send someone to find her?"

Dawlish nodded, but Mr. Prewett goggled at Laurel.

"You lied about her leaving you alone for the day?" he said faintly. "Under the Imperius Curse? You lied under the Imperius Curse?"

Laurel shrugged, displaying none of the obvious pride she had when Ophelia had asked about her breaking the curse before. She had a feeling these two Auror people, who she had realized were some kind of magical policemen, wouldn't be very impressed if she behaved like she relished the results of wandering off when told not to. The two Aurors were staring again, as was Ophelia. Laurel could hear murmuring from the mouth of the alley. Apparently at least one person over there had heard, too.

The Aurors exchanged a look. Dawlish nodded, and Williamson gestured to man, woman, and girl to follow. The crowd drew back without prompting, like the Red Sea before Moses. Across Knockturn Alley, almost directly opposite the blind nook that the encounter had taken place in, was relatively wide tavern with clean windows looking in to an establishment that was closed for the day, chairs overturned atop tables and lights all out. As they walked across the narrow road, Laurel heard whispers from the left and right both.

"—resisted an Unforgivable Curse, at her age—"

"—but it's not the first time, is it? Won't save that twit from Azkaban, though—"

"—really is her! I can see the scar, look—"

Ophelia stepped out in front as they crossed and raised her wand, running it vertically over the door of the tavern several times. Laurel recognized the wood as similar to one of the wands Mr. Ollivander had made her try before she had found her acacia wand. Was it applewood, she wondered absently? She thought it was. It was nearly as elegant and quite as long as her own wand.

The door opened after the fourth wave of the wand, and they followed Ophelia inside. She led them to a door in the back, which opened to a staircase that climbed steeply upward to the left. Laurel realized that Ophelia and her family must live above the tavern, which itself looked cleaner than almost everything else in Knockturn Alley. They came to a cramped landing, where Ophelia passed her wand over the door's lock twice. The door swung open of its own accord then, and Ophelia gestured them inside.

*** * ***

It was a disappointingly ordinary apartment with a sitting room and several bedrooms, even if the design of the woodwork was a bit old-fashioned and grim-looking. The Auror Williamson wasted no time in getting full and complete accounts from all of them, taking each of them one at a time into a separate room. Laurel thought, with some annoyance, that he had done this to shield her (the eleven-year-old girl) from the full grisly account of whatever Mr. Prewett must have gone through. But she realized belatedly, when Williamson brought Mr. Prewett out again, that he might also have been trying to spare the man the stress of telling his story in front of two strangers.

Mr. Prewett and Laurel sat in silence while Ophelia gave her own brief account in that same separate room. Dawlish joined them partway through, and Mr. Prewett directed him to join his partner. When Laurel's turn came, she followed Dawlish into the room and told them both, with a sheepish downplaying of her actions that she thought would make her look less foolish for taking such risks, everything that had happened. She started from the point where Professor McGonagall had left to see the Granger family back to Charing Cross Road, mentioned recognizing the Muggle father and daughter from the bank, and mentioned her speculation that the man-who-had-become-a-girl had been changing stolen Muggle money for gold. Williamson had given a slight half-nod before remembering he was talking to an eleven-year-old who was not to be told such things, which Laurel took to mean she had guessed it right and they had learned as much from Mr. Prewett already.

At last, the questioning ended. Dawlish and Williamson thanked them for their cooperation.

"We've already examined your captor's wand," Dawlish told Mr. Prewett on his way to the door. "Between the evidence it provided and your testimony, well... our friend, whoever he is, will most certainly spend the rest of his days in Azkaban. In fact, I'd stake my right hand on it. You won't have to worry about him ever again, Mr. Prewett."

Thanking Dawlish and Williamson profusely and shaking their hands, Mr. Prewett saw them off as they left the apartment. Pausing behind Dawlish just outside the door, Williamson turned back and said, "Oh, Miss Potter! Please remain with Miss Greengrass until Professor McGonagall comes to collect you. We have someone out looking for her now. It shouldn't be long."

Laurel heard them trooping down the stairs. Mr. Prewett turned back to her, weary but smiling in dull relief, looking straight at Laurel.

"It's over," said the Squib stockbroker. "It really is over, isn't it?"

Laurel stared back, feeling a funny anxiety tingling in her body and fingers that she didn't know what to do with. Ophelia spoke up to fill the awkward silence left by Laurel's inability to form a coherent response.

"It's over," she said. "I'm sure by now, Aurors have already been dispatched to your house to lift the Imperius Curse from your family..."

"And to modify their memories," Mr. Prewett said, sounding like he didn't know what to feel about that. "I haven't told my wife or children a thing about magic or the magical world... I never thought we would get dragged back into it."

Laurel looked from Mr. Prewett to Ophelia. "That crook said something about that before," she said. "That he'd wipe my memory and 'pin it on' me."

Ophelia was horrified, her composure cracking completely for the first time since she'd first appeared with a bang in Laurel's day. Mr. Prewett grimaced.

"Witches and wizards can erase memories," said the Squib stiffly. "I've heard they can even plant fake ones, if they're good enough at it. I think he meant to make it a clean break, wipe our memories, and... make it look like you'd been messing about with Dark magic. I'm not sure how the Ministry would react to that."

"I'm not even sure they'd believe a girl your age could work one of the Unforgivables..." Ophelia said slowly, "...but seeing as you're Laurel Potter... someone might just be uncertain enough about you to think you could manage it... I've heard whispers, I'll admit..."

Ophelia trailed off. She and Mr. Prewett exchanged darkly significant looks, as if they understood something Laurel didn't. Laurel, seething a little at being in the dark, asked, "Whispers?"

"She'll mean she's heard other pure-bloods wondering if you could be some kind of rival to You-Know-Who," Mr. Prewett said shrewdly. He was eyeing Ophelia with a bit of caution. "Griselda Greengrass is one of those, isn't she? A believer in your 'old ways?'"

A faint wince crossed Ophelia's face. "As is Daphne," she admitted. "Aunt Griselda is a Burke by birth, after all. It might be a good idea if you leave before they come back, Mr. Prewett."

The explanation had only brought up _more_ things Laurel didn't understand! She looked between the two. "One of what? What old ways?" she asked, some of the crossness she felt coming through at last in her face and voice. "Why does he need to leave?"

Mr. Prewett, looking uncomfortable, said, "I said it before, Laurel. I'm a Squib."

At Laurel's vaguely cross, uncomprehending expression, Ophelia took mercy on her at last with an explanation. "A Squib is what we call non-magical children born to wizard parents, Laurel," she said. "Some families, like my aunt's, aren't... kind, about it."

Mr. Prewett took a breath and pinched his nose. "What Miss Greengrass means to say is that her aunt wouldn't like knowing that a Squib dirtied her home for any longer than was necessary to cooperate with the authorities," he said. "So I should leave. Miss Greengrass, all of my money was changed to gold and that's been confiscated by the Ministry. Can I trouble you for a loan? I'll need to take the Underground to get home."

Ophelia winced. "I have no Muggle money, I'm sorry to say..." she said. "I could take you to Gringotts—"

"I can lend you some," Laurel said, happy at last to have some sensible part to play in the conversation. She went over to her bag, which she'd left sitting on a chair. She pulled out the pocket-book she'd bought for her Muggle money. One of the shops on Diagon Alley sold wallets and things in a corner display, for witches and wizards that needed to venture out into the non-magical world frequently, and she'd picked one up. Snapping it open, she pulled out what she thought was enough for dinner and the trip home, and gave it to a grateful Mr. Prewett.

"I'll send this money back by owl when I have the chance," he said. "Fortunately, I still have enough to get by—"

"Not necessary," Laurel said brightly. "I have plenty, I'm rich in fact! And you've just been the victim of a crook, Mr. Prewett, sir. Take it. I'm glad I can help someone like this."

Mr. Prewett hesitated, his smile faltering. Ophelia put a hand on Laurel's shoulder. "You can take Laurel's generosity without guilt, sir," she said calmly, giving the man a smile. "I remember reading in the news about the fortune from her father and grandfather that she inherited when... well, when her parents passed. I very much doubt a train ticket will put much of a dent in her bank statements."

Laurel felt a curious tingling in her toes and looked down, feeling her face go pink for no particular reason.

"Alright," Mr. Prewett said at last. "Thank you, Miss Potter, and thank you for intervening when you did. If you hadn't, I don't know what would have happened..."

"I'm sure that crook would have wiped your memories and moved onto some other family and you'd have gone on like normal," Laurel said, almost mumbling. "But, um... y'know. Happy to help."

Mr. Prewett grinned then, and walked over to take Laurel's right hand in both of his.

"Thank you," he said again. "Even if you're right, Laurel, he didn't wipe our memories and he didn't get away with it. A very bad person is going to prison because of you, and it... I'm relieved, to know that he won't do to anyone what he did to us."

Laurel briefly wondered if she'd ever learn the name of the nameless "him" they had been talking about the whole while. She was only half-paying-attention, still blushing and looking down and wondering about this, as Mr. Prewett took his leave. Ophelia took her hand off Laurel's shoulder and Laurel looked up at her, feeling an odd sort of discomfort and wishing she'd have kept her hand there.

"Ophelia, right? Can I call you Ophelia?" Laurel asked.

Ophelia, who had gone over to make sure the door was locked, nodded. "Yes, Laurel," she said. "I only just came of age last winter, actually. I think... you're starting at Hogwarts this year, right?" She turned back to Laurel.

Laurel, smiling bashfully, moved to sit on a chair by the table in the apartment's open kitchen. "That's right. I just bought my wand and my school things today." The acacia wand had been returned to her when she'd given her statement, and it was now securely packed away in its box in the backpack again.

Ophelia smiled. "Then we'll be going to school together, at least for this one year," Ophelia said. "It'll be my seventh. Is it true you were raised by Muggles?"

Looking away nervously, Laurel let her eyes stray to a large leather-bound book and some notes on parchment on the table. Laurel thought it was probably some of Ophelia's summer homework; maybe she'd been doing it when she heard the yelling across the way, Laurel guessed. The book's title was visible, but Laurel couldn't read it from here. "Yes. I live with my aunt and uncle," Laurel said. "They don't like magic much. Or me."

"I live with my aunt, too," Ophelia said. She frowned. "Although, Aunt Griselda is only my aunt by marriage. It was my uncle who was to be my guardian, but..."

She trailed off, shaking her head.

"He was tortured by You-Know-Who's supporters, when I was a child," she said. "And I can't even go visit him unless I go by myself. Today's the first day I've been glad for that. I'm happy I was here to help out."

Laurel, frowning, said, "I'm glad you were here, too. Why do you have to visit your dad by yourself?"

Ophelia smiled again, a bit wanly. "My aunt doesn't like me, either," she said. "I guess we have that in common, Laurel. Tell me, do your aunt and uncle have any children of their own?"

Laurel nodded absently. "A fat, spoiled pig in a wig named Dudley," she said unapologetically. "It's exactly what you think. I don't get on with him."

"I have a cousin, too, as I've mentioned," Ophelia said, "although she actually does like me. She's like a little sister. You'll be going to school with Daphne, actually. She starts this year, too. That's actually why they're at St. Mungo's today... Daphne's just turned eleven today."

Pausing, she tapped her chin, as if trying to remember something. Laurel asked, "St. Mungo's... is that a hospital?"

Ophelia, distracted from whatever she was trying to remember, nodded. "Oh, yes, you wouldn't know. It's a wizarding hospital, yes. Uncle is there, in the long-term ward... oh, um, please don't bring it up in front of Daphne." There was a short pause, and then Ophelia looked guilty. "I probably shouldn't have said anything, but it's been on my mind all day. I suppose it just came leaking out."

"I won't say anything. Consider my memory wiped," Laurel said easily, leaning in to look at the book and notes on the table.

If it was homework, it was very curious homework. The parchment bore names under what looked like brackets. Seeing the word "me" under one of them, beneath the names _Oswell Greengrass_ and _Morgana Greengrass (née Graves)_, Laurel realized it was an incomplete family tree. Above those names were _Mordred Graves_ and a blank space. Evidently the writer did not know who Mordred Graves had married.

The book, she had no idea about. The title, embossed in the green-tinted leather, was a real mouthful: _A Complete Modern Genealogy of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, As It Is Known in A.D. 1989_. There was no author's name visible on the cover.

Ophelia coughed lightly into her hand, and Laurel drew back, suddenly feeling as if she were sticking her nose into something private.

"It's not what you think," Ophelia said. "I was trying to find out something about my mother's side of the family. But, it looks like that book may not be useful after all. It's from my aunt's collection."

Laurel looked back at Ophelia, and was at the point of asking what the "Sacred Twenty-Eight" was when a bell rang through the apartment. Ophelia stood up, excused herself, and went down to the tavern floor to see who it was.

When she returned, a thin-lipped Professor McGonagall was following after her. "I take my eyes off of you for ten minutes!" she burst out immediately as soon as she was in the door. "And you wander into Knockturn Alley, of all places! What were you thinking, Miss Potter?"

Laurel lowered her head, biting her lip. The contrite act was, in this case, not entirely an act. She did feel a little bad for worrying Professor McGonagall, who must have been searching for her for quite a while before someone from the Ministry had managed to find her and tell her where Laurel had gotten to.

"I'm sorry, professor," she said mournfully (it _was_ mostly an act, though). "I saw someone I thought looked strange and thought I should get a closer look before telling someone. I didn't know that Knockturn Alley was somewhere I shouldn't go."

She had been informed, gently enough, by Dawlish and Williamson during her questioning that Knockturn Alley was not a place that minors should enter lightly. Even students who lived on a Knockturn Alley premises, like the Greengrass girls, traveled by Floo if they needed to go to Diagon Alley unaccompanied. (Floo meant, Laurel had learned, travel-by-fireplace. This magic stuff just kept getting weirder and weirder.)

Ophelia stepped up next to Laurel and put a hand on her shoulder. Laurel felt a giddy happiness at her show of support.

"Professor, I know you've been worried, but the fact is that a dark wizard was apprehended because of Laurel's actions, and they likely would have gotten away with everything if she hadn't been there," said Ophelia. "Please don't be too harsh on her."

"Be that as it may, Miss Greengrass — Miss Potter, you could have been very seriously hurt," Professor McGonagall said. "You are very lucky that Miss Greengrass was nearby. What happened?"

Looking up, Laurel was relieved to see that a small bit of the anger that had been in Professor McGonagall's white face had faded away. Just a bit of it. Now, though, she looked a little more alarmed. Laurel realized that Professor McGonagall had not been given the full story yet.

"Um," said Laurel, feeling heat rising in her cheeks. She looked to Ophelia, who gripped Laurel's shoulder a little more tightly in encouragement. Bolstered, Laurel swallowed a lump, and said in a rush, "W-well, that Muggle and his daughter I saw next to us at the counters in Gringotts was actually an adult man and a Squib he was mind-controlling, and he tried to do that Imperio spell on me but I broke it? And he tried to use my wand but it didn't work, and Mr. Prewett broke the spell and we tackled him to the ground and Ophelia showed up and blasted us apart and cast some spell on the bad guy and made it so he couldn't move except his eyeballs, and the Aurors arrived and, um, here we are!"

It was a much less eloquent retelling of the encounter than she'd given to Dawlish and Williamson. Professor McGonagall, staring now, moved sideways until she found an armchair with her hand and sank into it, looking like she might faint.

"Tried to do that Imperio spell," she said dully.

"Um," Laurel said again.

Ophelia stepped forward, but didn't let go of Laurel's shoulder. "Our as-yet-unnamed culprit had a Squib and his entire Muggle family under the Imperius Curse, professor," she said bracingly. "And they went to Gringotts today and changed a large sum of Muggle money for wizarding gold without anyone there realizing what was going on... Laurel shouldn't have done it, but because she did, that horrible man is going to spend the rest of his life with the dementors."

Laurel looked up, barely stopping herself from asking what the dementors were. Ophelia went on, talking right over Professor McGonagall when she opened her mouth to speak.

"She's been nothing but contrite about stumbling into danger since I arrived, Professor. She knows what she did was wrong."

Laurel ducked her head, her face heating up. Ophelia was lying for her. Laurel knew that Ophelia had noticed how proud she was at first, and surely Ophelia had also noticed that Laurel had changed her tune when the Aurors had shown up...

Gratitude and guilt welled up inside her. She felt tears coming to her eyes. Tears, she realized, that could be used to show just how contrite she was. So she looked up, her vision blurring.

"I'm sorry," Laurel said shakily. "I didn't think, and I didn't know this street was bad news, honest! I shan't do it again, I promise. Please don't be cross..."

Professor McGonagall closed her mouth, took off her spectacles, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose.

"See that you don't, Miss Potter," the professor said wearily. "You've been through an ordeal, and as we aren't yet at school — far be it from me, to — I suppose I should tell your guardians, but—"

Ophelia, smiling in an understanding way, said, "It's Hogwarts policy not to inform Muggle guardians of incidents unless they have sat and passed the W.O.M.B.A.T., isn't it, professor?"

Professor McGonagall huffed in a way that said she had taken Ophelia's point, and rubbed at her eyes with her thumb and index finger. "Well, Miss Potter, if you have learned your lesson," she said, "we still have the Magical Menagerie to visit. You do still want a cat, do you not?"

Laurel, wiping her eyes, stood up and turned to look at Ophelia. She mouthed, _thank you. _Ophelia grinned and winked.

Laurel left the Welsh Green tavern hand-in-hand with McGonagall, still feeling the tingling absence of Ophelia's hand on her shoulder. At the Magical Menagerie, Laurel managed to forget the whole ordeal for a little while, looking at the different magical pets they had for sale and asking both the shopkeeper and Professor McGonagall about this one and that one and the other one. When she left the Menagerie at last and they made their way back to the Leaky Cauldron for dinner and their trip home, it was with a beautiful dark-furred, green-eyed Javanese cat curled up in her arms, purring contentedly as she occasionally nuzzled it and spoke to it and told it they were going to be living in a school of magic soon and she would love it there just as much as Laurel would.

Aunt Petunia wasn't best pleased when Laurel walked back into the house with a cat in her arms. She hated animals, did Aunt Petunia. But that just made it all a little more worthwhile, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note:
> 
> A little shorter than last chapter, but quite a lot more eventful, I would say. This is where I've started to really branch out. While the previous chapters were mostly just alternative re-introductions of characters and concepts we already know from canon, this chapter marks the first entirely new happening in this alternate timeline, as well as the introduction of an original character, Ophelia, and an adaptation of a cut concept from J. K. Rowling's own work: Molly Weasley's second cousin, the Squib stockbroker, whose daughter Mafalda was originally to be sorted into Slytherin House in Harry's fourth year. According to Rowling, Mafalda was dropped due to how her age limited her role, but she's given us a fair amount of information on what Mafalda was planned to be like. Since Laurel is going to be in Slytherin, I figured it was only fitting that Laurel and Mafalda should meet, especially since they seem to have some similar personality traits.
> 
> The scenario involving a Dark wizard using the Imperius Curse to control a non-magical individual, force them to change their Muggle money to gold, wipe their memories and then run away with it was one that occurred to me in a blaze of inspiration while writing the previous chapter and I did not originally think of making the victim the non-magical Weasley cousin. That, and the everything to do with the character of Ophelia Greengrass, came to me during the work-week between chapters; I have a lot of time to dream up ideas for fanfiction while my brain is running on warehouse conveyor line autopilot ten hours a day.
> 
> Astoria Greengrass is, alas, nonexistent in this timeline. Those of you who know your Potter lore will probably be able to figure out why without me having to tell you. I had considered bringing in Astoria later, to have some sort of storyline relating to the blood curse she inherited (the reason she died so young), but it was not to be.
> 
> Anyway, as always: I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> — Lewis Medeiros,  
November 25th, 2019 at 8:10 AM


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